Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Spring training and the death of small schools

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Spring training and the death of small schools

Spring training and the death of small schools

by Mike Klonsky

I was in Ft. Myers Wednesday, where we had a chance to meet fantastic teacher/activist and tweeter Bonnie Cunard, a real leader in Florida's Save Our Schools movement. After that, we decided to head over a few blocks to City of Palms Park, the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox.

It's a beautiful night and the Sox are hosting Tampa Bay. But on our way, I have to pull the car over when the cell phone rings. It's Linda Lutton from WBEZ radio telling me that Chicago's interim schools CEO, Terry Mazany is going to announce up to 20 school closings the next day, including the remaining small schools at Bowen High, which we -- the Small Schools Workshop -- helped start. Linda wanted to know what I thought about all that and I told her in the most direct way I could.

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The small schools at Bowen were originally conceived, organized and led by teachers with lots of support from the school's principal and its