Board Of Education Says Yes And No To Proposed Charter School Moves
By Danette Chavez in News on May 29, 2015 8:00PM
Charter schools had good and bad luck at Wednesday night's Board of Education meeting: The board said yes to the Rowe charter school move to a former CPS site but has delayed voting on the relocation of the Noble School to Uptown.
Rowe Elementary Charter School has set its sights on the former location of the now-closed Peabody Elementary and now, with the board's approval, will operate out of the Annex at 1444 W. Augusta Blvd. until a permanent home is found. The building was sold to a developer last October, so the school system will be kicking in funds to help the public charter school cover rent and maintenance costs.
Noble Academy has a more substantial ask—the charter high school wants to move into a building at 642 W. Irving Park Rd. (formerly Immaculata Sisters High School) and make use of about 64,000 square feet of space. The proposed move has received considerable pushback from community members and leaders: Ald. James Cappleman (46th Ward) and Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th Ward) expressed concerns that Noble Academy would affect enrollment and budgets at existing neighborhood high schools.
"The addition of a charter school in this area will weaken our five great neighborhood high schools, which have already faced major budget cuts this year," Ald. Cappleman said.
But Noble Academy principal Pablo Sierra doesn't see his school's relocation as a reduction in resources for Uptown high schools like Amundsen and Senn, insisting that the move will "grow the pie" and satisfy "a lot of pent-up demand [that] is not being met." Nonetheless, CPS board president David Vitale said the board needs time to mull over the information received at several meetings it's held on the matter, so the vote on the charter high school's move has been delayed.
The school closings, which began in 2013, have been a bitter pill for parents and CPS teachers to swallow. Tensions run even higher now that CPS has seemingly gone back on its promise not to allow closed schools sites to be repurposed as charter schools. CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett staunchly opposed allowing charter schools to set up shop in former CPS buildings. But with Byrd-Bennett on leave and in the midst of a scandal, the school board is now saying that they will consider allowing charter schools into shuttered CPS schools as long as there is "community support" for the new arrivals.