Students and community leaders have protested plans to open a new charter school across the street from Prosser High School, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel appears to be pushing ahead. |Lauren Fitzpatrick/Sun-Times Media
By Ben Joravsky. | The Chicago Reader. December 31, 2013
Combatants in the great charter school debate went toe-to-toe a couple of weeks ago in a bout that should have been broadcast live on TV.
It wasn’t Karen Lewis duking it out in the ring with Mayor Rahm Emanuel—a fight we all want to see. But it was almost as good.
Some of the officials who operate the Noble and Intrinsic charter networks—well-connected power players in the charter school movement—came to a northwest-side church to answer sharp questions from their critics, many of whom were members of the teachers’ union.
It was the December meeting of the area’s neighborhood advisory council, a group set up by the Board of Education to offer advice on whether the board should dole out precious money for two new charter high schools on the northwest side.
Not that there’s any doubt about what the board is going to decide, regardless of the feedback it gets.
Let’s be honest: Mayor Emanuel has made it clear he intends to expand charters, even as he cuts the budgets