Chicago Cuts Funding for Neighborhood Schools, Continues to Implement Unproven Reforms
Last week Chicago’s school board passed a budget for the 2014-20 15school year that,according to the Chicago Tribune, “cuts funding to traditional schools by $72 million while increasing spending by the same amount for privately run charter and contract schools.” The Tribune reports that this budget reduces funding for neighborhood schools for the second year in a row.
Earlier this summer, Pauline Lipman and researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, released a report that examines the impact on Chicago’s families of the city’s school governance changes in the past two decades that have rapidly opened unregulated charter schools while closing a mass of traditional public schools. Here is the summary that begins that report:
“On May 22, 2013 Chicago’s appointed Board of Education voted to close 50 schools, turn around five others, and co-locate 17 elementary schools, affecting roughly 40,000 students. This was the largest number of schools closed at one time in the U.S. Since 2001, Chicago Public Schools has closed, turned-around, phased-out, or consolidated over 150 neighborhood public schools in low-income African American and Latino communities. This policy has disproportionately affected African American students and communities. At the same time, CPS has expanded privately run charter and turnaround schools. These actions should be understood in relation to CPS’ ‘portfolio’ district agenda in which schools are part of a market of largely interchangeable public and private services, rather than stabilizing neighborhood institutions.”
Lipman and her colleagues conducted qualitative research based on extensive interviews with the parents whose children were affected by the most recent school closures and Chicago Cuts Funding for Neighborhood Schools, Continues to Implement Unproven Reforms | janresseger: