The Real Truth About CPS School Closings
Seventy-seven percent of African Americans in Chicago do not approve of CPS's plans to close schools and move children to other schools. CPS a few weeks ago announced 54 school closings, 11 school co-locations (with charter schools), and 6 turnarounds, estimating that approximately 30,000 students would be impacted by these actions.
However, this is not true. These school actions will affect 133 schools and 47,500 students in these proposed school actions. There are three kinds of possible impacts of these school actions:
1. Relocation of students would occur under three circumstances; a. Students from most closing schools are proposed to relocate to a receiving school. b. In 14 of the proposed school actions, students and faulty from the receiving school would relocate to the building of the closing school. c. In the 8 co-locations that do not involve a new school, students would be relocated from one co-location school to the other. Relocating students from 60 schools would be impacted by the loss existing school community; the challenges of adapting to a new school community; having to negotiate new routes to school; and disruptions to relationships, services, and learning processes in place at the current school.
2. Receiving students who have been located from another school who are enrolled in the 65 schools receiving new students would be impacted by the redistribution of school services and resources; disruptions caused by adapting to the influx of new students; and changes to the school community and relationships. Administrators, faculty and staff would be impacted by the workload of programming for, and accommodating, the incoming students and personnel; and revising service provision models in place for students with special needs and response to intervention processes.