Forrest Claypool: CPS must engage the community before consolidating empty schools
To avoid the mistakes of the past, however, school consolidations must be part of a larger plan that marshals significant new neighborhood investments under the guidance of organic community leadership.
With around 71,000 fewer students than a decade ago, CPS has almost twice as many severely underenrolled facilities as in 2013, when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel shuttered 50 schools, the largest mass closure in the nation.
Today, 3 of every 10 schools are half empty, and 47 operate at less than a third of capacity, including Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which spends $93,000 for each of its 28 students. For its 20 least occupied schools (less than 15% utilization), CPS is seeking $1 billion for repairs and improvements, a per student average of $330,000.
For taxpayers, these numbers are sinful; for students, they are sinister. Chalkbeat and ProPublica found that underenrolled schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college attendance rates, with higher numbers of chronic truants and dropouts. Normal course offerings and extracurricular activities are limited or absent.
When a fully elected school board is seated in 18 months, it will inherit a functionally bankrupt district. CPS carries a junk debt rating, the worst among urban school systems. Since 2019, enrollment has dropped by almost 38,000 students yet school officials used one-time COVID-19 relief dollars to hire 7,800 new permanent employees. Worse, they inked a lavish new four-year teachers union contract adding $1.5 billion in expenses and no road map to fund it.
When federal COVID-19 relief funds run out next year, the school board will face difficult decisions, including the need to consolidate schools. Chicago must craft its strategy not only to lift students but also entire neighborhoods.
In the painful but necessary 2013 closings, no effort was made to replace shuttered schools that had served as neighborhood anchors or to ameliorate the harmful effects of closings. The message to affected communities was one of disinvestment and despair.
It need not be that way.
In 2016, with memories of the painful closings still fresh, Emanuel greenlighted an experiment in how to approach school consolidations differently. As his new schools CEO, I did not turn to bureaucrats or accountants. Instead, I reached out to community leaders in Englewood, the impoverished South Side neighborhood containing four aging, academically failing and deeply underenrolled high schools. It was obvious the status quo was failing, but change could not be imposed by CPS or City Hall. Englewood was the right place to try a grassroots approach because it had strong and sophisticated leaders with deep credibility and pride in their neighborhood.
Supported by a foundation grant, the Englewood Community Action Council and the West Englewood Coalition led a lengthy and assiduous process of research, outreach to residents and community forums, deftly sidelining outsiders who came to rabble-rouse, engage in self-promotion or carry water for special interests.
Task force members studied the hard data and concluded Englewood's underenrolled schools could not offer what their children deserved. With no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they made the tough decision to recommend closing four underperforming schools in exchange for construction of a brand-new one. They also bargained for a new community health clinic, neighborhood construction apprenticeships, new safe transit options and a college credit program with Kennedy-King College.
Today, Englewood STEM boasts a state-of-the-art high school complete with gleaming science labs, an 800-person gymnasium, carefully groomed sports fields and specialized after-school programs. Sadly, its five-year academic record is weak but can be turned around under stronger leadership that leverages the benefits of modern infrastructure and fulsome resources.
An expanded version of the Englewood model can provide a blueprint for change. It will require significant public and private investments in infrastructure, housing, recreation, public safety, transit, job training and more in an all-hands-on-deck effort that coordinates city and state; CPS, the CTA, the Chicago Housing Authority, City Colleges and parks; labor and business; foundations and philanthropists; and not-for-profits such as the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), among many others.
To succeed, each neighborhood improvement plan must be defined by local residents and the process free of outside interference. That's easier said than done in today's toxic political and media environment, in which demagoguery and naked self-interest too often win. But it offers the best chance for the next generation of students and for Chicago's neighborhoods.
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