Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson promised he would not touch the selective-enrollment high schools, the one bright spot in the dismal school district.
Don’t ever believe politicians, especially far-left ones like Johnson.
Johnson’s Board of Education passed a resolution that could keep kids out of those high-achieving schools and remain in the failing schools.
This new “policy could eliminate the opportunity for students to test into one of CPS’s selective high schools.”
The resolution starts on page 21 (emphasis mine):
Reimagined Vision: A community-informed plan that brings together educational and operationalgoals to:1) ensure fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities mostharmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment;2) ensure equitable funding and resources across schools within the District using an equitylens;3) transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches thatfurther stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away fromneighborhood schools;4) include the community in designing plans for previously closed and currently”underutilized” schools that reimagines these buildings as community assets, hubs, andresources
From NBC Chicago:
Some parents in the district however feel the move could wind up hurting students by taking away opportunities to test into selective schools, like Walter Payton College Prep.”The selective enrollment schools are one of the shining stars of CPS. They are actually something that CPS has done right,” Katie Milewski, a CPS mother said. “And it needs to be supported.””Neighborhood schools absolutely need help. No doubt about that. I’m not sure why those concepts are mutually exclusive,” Milewski continued. “Why neighborhood schools can’t be built up, at the same time of supporting selective enrollment and magnet schools?”
The district’s statement makes me want to puke (emphasis mine):
“The Board’s resolution aims to guide engagement and development in partnership with the District on a new strategic plan with an emphasis on strengthening all neighborhood schools as a critical step toward supporting all students and closing opportunity and achievement gaps. Work on the District’s next five-year Strategic Plan has begun and will continue this spring with community engagement and outreach, beginning with the District’s Shape Our Future Survey as well as current engagement sessions about the District’s facilities master plan. The new strategic plan will be approved by the Board of Education in the summer of 2024. While CPS will work with the community and its City partners to co-design the strategic plan, the parameters call for ‘a model that centers neighborhood schools by investing in and acknowledging them as institutional anchors in our communities, and by prioritizing communities most impacted by past and ongoing racial and economic inequity and structural disinvestment.’ Specific community engagement sessions about the development of the new strategic plan will begin in February.”
We’ve always known the Chicago Board of Education and teachers don’t care about the kids. They were the worst during COVID.
If they truly cared about the kids, they would have invested in these schools long ago. How does depriving students of a great school like Lane Tech (my dad went there!) help a school?
I do not understand how keeping those kids who can get into those schools in the neighborhood schools helps those who cannot test into the college prep schools.
How does this work? (Rhetorical question. I know the answer.)
The Chicago Tribune‘s Editorial Board scorched Johnson and others who do not want anyone to succeed (emphasis is mine):
The resolution is fertilizing the soil for a five-year “transformational” strategic plan, apparently coming this summer from Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez. The resolution calls for “a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”That’s obfuscating language, of course, which is this administration’s preferred mode of communication, especially when it comes to launching trial balloons like this one.“Transformation” is a Pravda-esque word for remaking something the way the people in power want it to be remade. “Transition away” minimizes change that many people, especially working-class Chicagoans of color, don’t want. And, yet worse, the resolution accepts the false binary that selective-enrollment schools hurt neighborhood schools, when a decent system would improve the latter even as it retains the former.
The Editorial Board is correct. No matter what they say, we all know how this will end: no more school choice.
Chicago leaders insist they don’t see these schools falling apart. Parents can still send their kids to the schools!
But that expectation could change if people in the community say that’s what they want. Officials plan to hold meetings over the next few months for the public to weigh in on how they want this transition to take place.“This plan needs to be guided and informed by the community,” Board President Jianan Shi said. “The goal is that we’re able to change [the] current competition model so that students are not pitted against one another, schools are not pitted against one another.”
That’s a massive pile of horse crap. It is all about the Chicago Teachers Union and politicians.
Johnson used to organize for the CTU. The CTU literally had him in its pocket when he ran for mayor, too.
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