Even as the nation’s third-largest school district ushered in a new wave of school reform, Chicago Public Schools students resumed classes Tuesday with few surprises and fewer glitches than in recent years.
After two years of transfers mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, often marked by confusion, only 457 students were offered the option this year.
The closing of 10 schools forced about 3,500 students from the South and Near North Sides to transfer, however, as Mayor Richard Daley’s ambitious Renaissance 2010 initiative began to take full effect. Attucks Elementary, a previously underutilized school on the South Side, almost doubled in size as it inherited about 140 students from two nearby schools that closed, said Principal Carol Perry.
It was supposed to grow even more. About 400 children were expected at the school Tuesday morning, but 309 showed up.
“That’s a big number,” Perry said of the absentees, adding that some parents were still miffed about the school closings. “We will be looking for our missing 89 students.”
About 33,000 students boarded yellow school buses Tuesday as the district tries to reduce its transportation costs, said Chester Tindell, the general manager of the Bureau of Student Transportation.
Busing glitches were also fewer, Tindell said, with his office receiving about 300 calls Tuesday. Most were from parents wanting to know where to send their children for bus pickup.
In what has become a tradition, Mayor Richard Daley rang a bell to signal the first day of classes, this time at Lloyd Elementary School in the Hermosa Park neighborhood. The mayor, a supporter of preschool programs, was at the school to tout the district’s expanded efforts in early education.
Ten new schools opened this year, including three charter schools and four small schools-within-a-school. A contract school called Chicago Academy High School opened in the former Wilbur Wright College building on the Northwest Side in the Portage Park neighborhood, taking in 9th graders as the struggling high school begins its transformation into several smaller schools (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Perspectives Charter School, a successful model that district officials hope to replicate around the city as part of Renaissance 2010, moved to a new building, a quirky $4 million, triangular structure at State Street and Archer Avenue.
For the first time, Perspectives students will have access to a reference library and will no longer have to share lockers or squeeze through crowded hallways.
“Now we have a big school,” said Brittany Patterson, 17. “We came from a warehouse to a trailer to now this. I love it.”
Some overcrowded schools on the Southwest Side got relief as the new Claremont School in West Englewood opened its doors to 485 students in kindergarten through 7th grade.
Many parents registered their children at the last minute despite the system’s citywide campaign that urged parents to sign up early so students could begin class on time.
At least 100 unexpected students showed up at Claremont Tuesday. A long line of families snaked through the third-floor multipurpose room waiting to register two hours after classes had begun.
Many residents in the West Side neighborhood of Garfield Park were happy to see the old Lucy Flower Technical High School reopened as the Al Raby School for Community and Environment with 125 freshmen.
Another small school will open in the same building. Plans call for a horticulture school, a school of performing arts or a language arts specialty school, with 500 students each in Raby and its companion school.
Lewis Crawford, a security guard at the school since 1985, said he was skeptical at first when Lucy Flower closed but is now satisfied.
“It’s good for the neighborhood,” he said. “[We] were thinking it was just going to be a big vacant building.”
Farther west, school started on a sour note after vandals ripped apart two dozen classrooms at Nash Elementary in the Austin neighborhood.
Principal Darryl Moore had been counting on a smooth opening day and was encouraged by the enthusiasm from his teachers, many of whom worked into the weekend setting up their classrooms.
Then he learned late Sunday that three boys, two of whom were students at Nash, had undone much of the work. They allegedly trashed 24 rooms and attempted to steal some computers.
As Moore met with teachers early Tuesday to reassure them, he received more bad news: A teacher whispered to him that she had just discovered human waste in her classroom, presumably left by the vandals.
“It’s a shame to start the first of the year doing expulsion orders,” Moore said.
