Amid mass school closings, a slow death for some Chicago schools | MSNBC

Amid mass school closings, a slow death for some Chicago schools | MSNBC:

 Walter Dyett High School, pictured here, is being phased out by the Chicago Public Schools. Since 2001, the district has closed, phased-out or turned around about 150 schools. The vast majority of the students affected by the school closures have been poor or African American.

TRYMAINE LEE FOR MSNBC

Amid mass school closings, a slow death for some Chicago schools

12/26/13 09:16 AM—UPDATED 12/26/13 09:24 AM

facebook twitter 2 save share group 24

By Trymaine Lee

CHICAGO— After Parrish Brown graduates from Walter Dyett High School this spring, it’s likely he’ll never set foot in that school building again. Not for a 10-year reunion or to catch up with former teachers or to admire the gleaming trophies inside the school’s display case.

Because if all goes according to the city’s plan, there soon will be no Walter Dyett High School to return to in Bronzeville, an historic African-American enclave on the city’s south side.

“They closed my elementary school and now they’re phasing out my high school. One day there’ll be nothing in my community to come back to,” said Brown, 17.

“Phasing-out” is a euphemism for slow death in a district that has become increasingly aggressive about closing public schools in poor and African-American neighborhoods. 

Dyett is scheduled to close at the end of next school year, at which point, community groups say, there will be no other viable public high school in the neighborhood–essentially creating a “school desert.”

PHOTO BY TRYMAINE LEE FOR MSNBC

Parrish Brown, 17, is a senior at Walter Dyett High School in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Dyett is on the list of schools being phased-out by Chicago Public Schools. When the school closes there will be no other viable public high school in the neighborhood, creating what critics of the closure call a “school desert.”

Mass school closings have become a growing trend in major cities across the country, including Philadelphia, New York City, Oakland and Detroit. But in Chicago, the school board has struck more broadly and with a heavier axe than any other school district in the country. For more than a decade the school district has been on a mission to close underperforming and underutilized schools, mostly in minority