Mayor Daley endorsed the idea Thursday of closing half-empty elementary schools, calling it “unacceptable” to keep them open even as he acknowledged it’s a difficult issue that will need to be addressed at the community level.
“It’s a challenge that should be discussed and addressed not for management reasons, but to do what’s right for our students and the community,” Daley said. “An under-enrolled school may lack some of the programming options that a fully enrolled school can offer. … And a half-empty school isn’t the kind of vital community anchor that a good school can be and should be.”
Last month, Chicago Public Schools officials indicated that they could be closing about 50 underutilized elementary schools, mostly on the South and Near West sides, over the next five years to address declining enrollment.
On Thursday, CPS Chief Arne Duncan characterized the pending moves as “consolidations” and reiterated that officials hope to have a plan to present to the school board at its meeting later this month.
“These will be simply proposals,” Duncan said Thursday. “And we’ll take some time and do some hearings and give the board time to contemplate it and the board will be acting either in February or March.”
Duncan said they “don’t have a firm number yet” on how many schools would be affected. He vowed that students who are moved would go to a school that is “at least as good, if not better” than the one they are leaving.
“Where you have a viable larger school two or three or four blocks away, you know, in the same neighborhood, I think from an educational standpoint there’s going to be some real benefits to the parents and to students,” Duncan said.
Perhaps in preparation for controversy that is sure to follow after the list of closed schools comes out, Daley called it “a complex issue that must be handled in a responsible way.”
Yet, he made it clear that he endorsed the approach taken so far by Duncan and school board President Rufus Williams. “You have to basically have a school that’s fully occupied,” Daley said at an appearance at Jenner Academy of the Arts, 1119 N. Cleveland Ave. “It can’t be 30, 40, 50 percent occupied. I mean, it’s just, it’s really, it’s unacceptable.”
But Daley insisted that schools won’t just be closed.
“There’ll be preparation for these young men and women, those students, to go to another school,” Daley said. “That’s the idea. Not just closing something down and saying, ‘OK, you go find your own way.’ “
