School renewal won't end :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education

School renewal won't end :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education

Renaissance 2010 and its push to create 100 new schools by this year, many of them from rejuvenated failing ones, won't end in 2010, Mayor Daley vowed Tuesday.

"We'll always continue," Daley told a group of educators and reporters at a news conference. "I hope there's a chapter two [of Renaissance 2010], a chapter three, a chapter four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10."


Chicago Public Schools are expected to soundly meet Daley's challenge, announced in June 2004 before a host of civic leaders, to create 100 new schools, in part by closing at least 70 troubled ones.


So far, Renaissance 2010 has given birth to 94 new schools -- many in high-poverty communities. Seven more are expected by fall, CPS officials say. Many were placed in dozens of schools closed for failing test scores or low enrollment.


Although bits and pieces of the initiative have been studied, no thorough analysis of all Renaissance 2010 schools has been released. Meanwhile, the effort has drawn both praise and protests.


Chicago Teachers Union officials and some parents have complained about children being shuffled from school to school, teachers being displaced, and spikes in violence at schools forced to absorb kids from closed schools. Some call the initiative an attempt to "privatize" the system with outside operators and "gentrify" struggling neighborhoods.


But many business leaders, nonprofit foundations and parents at some rejuvenated schools embrace the innovation and passion the effort has reaped. Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman calls it a