school closings

Parents Occupy Classroom To Protest School Closings

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:40:16 GMT

Source: chicago.cbslocal.com --- Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Protesters and police inside Lafayette Elementary school. (Credit: OCPress/Twitter) CHICAGO (CBS ) — Parents took over a classroom at Lafayette Elementary to protest the city’s plan to shut down the school after this year. Wednesday was the last day of classes at the school, 2714 W. Augusta Blvd. Nine parents occupied one of the classrooms, demanding that Mayor Emanuel and the school board reverse their decision. Lafayette is one of 49 under-performing or under-utilized elementary schools that will not reopen next year. “Closing Lafayette will kill our neighborhood and our families,” says Rousemary Vega, one of the parent occupiers. “We demand that this school stay open. We demand to keep our music programs, and our special ed program. We’re not leaving until this school is saved.” The Humboldt Park neighborhood school serves Pre-K to eighth grade students. CPS and Emanuel propose Lafayette students be displaced to Chopin Elementary, seven blocks away, where the future of Lafayette’s Merit school of Music program is uncertain, as is the program for autistic children, the parents said. A similar protest was reported at Chalmers Elementary school, 2745 W Roosevelt Road, where 30 parents were protesting on the last day. ...

CPS school closings begin | 28 out of 50 schools close Wednesday

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:23:04 GMT

Source: abclocal.go.com --- Wednesday, June 19, 2013
The controversial move to close 50 CPS schools becomes a reality for hundreds of students, parents and employees Wednesday. ...

Chicago Public School closings begin

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:50:25 GMT

Source: cltv.com --- Tuesday, June 18, 2013
After months of arguing and anguish, the closing of 50 Chicago Public Schools will begin Wednesday. It stood out on the list of Chicago public schools slated to close. Calhoun North Elementary in East Garfield Park had been recognized as a high-performing school that put up some of the best math scores in the city. On Wednesday, the school will close not for the year, but for good. “I believe that the district has historically kind of lived on a charge card, I guess,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett told a crowd gathered Tuesday night at a Chicago Tribune event in the loop. “We just weren’t paying careful attention to finances, which is one of the reasons we’re in the situation we’re in now.” Outside the venue, protesters armed with toilet paper yet again voiced their anger over the closing of 50 schools. At another event earlier in the day, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, had blasted the mayoral advisors who helped reshape the troubled district as a bunch of “rich white people” who know little about the needs of inner-city kids. “We’re creating more and more problems when you’re closing schools,” Lewis said. “You’re changing more curriculum, you’re changing evaluation, you’re doing this, now you’re changing the budget. I mean, it’s just so much chaos and I have to understand on some level, why do we continue to put our schools into chaos?” Not all of the schools will close their doors We ...