Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on Noble Street

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on Noble Street:

Shame on Noble Street

Shame. Shame on Noble St.
 
The Chicago Public Schools is experiencing a manufactured budget crisis of immense proportion leading to truly debilitating cuts to vast numbers of schools around the city. Schools are reporting the loss of teachers and support staff, as well as reductions in after-school programs, elementary sports teams, librarians, and special education services. In addition to over $200 million dollars in cuts announced at the beginning of the summer,another round of layoffs-including nearly 500 educators being pink-slipped-took place just this past Monday. The schools hardest hit by these cuts are schools serving high numbers of students with special needs and schools designed specifically for students with significant disabilities.
 
And it was on that date, the day thousands of CPS workers were told they would not be returning to their school communities, that the Noble St Charter organization came out to cheerlead for a new Noble campus on the southwest side at a Neighborhood Advisory Council (NAC) meeting. 
 
Noble St has an ambitious expansion plan that has nothing to do with community need. In a leaked Teach For America document obtained by the education blogger EduShyster, you can see Noble St and other charter operators' plans for massive growth:


From http://edushyster.com/is-tfa-undermining-the-chicago-public-schools/

Charter operators actually have a financial need to expand at any cost, or risk defaulting on public bonds they have taken out. UNO Charter Network notoriously came under federal investigation for misuse of those government bonds.  
 
And so Noble St has been scouring the city, desperately searching for a site to build, despite the obvious lack of need and potential negative impact to communities. Noble St first tried to open on the northside of the city, but was met with strong community and elected official opposition forcing them to yank that proposal. They also tried to move an existing school to a different location on the northside and again that proposal was yanked after meeting strong neighborhood resistance. Noble then turned its sights on the southwest side, beginning with at least two proposals, then dropping that number down to one after yet more resistance.

Now Noble St is focusing all its attention on a southwest side location at 47th and California. There is absolutely no need for a school just five blocks away from Kelly High School and down the street from a new UNO High School. A number of other new high schools have already been built recently in the area including Solorio and Back of the Yards High Schools. All neighborhood schools in the area will be severely impacted if this Noble expansion is allowed to proceed and students and resources are allowed to be siphoned away. Despite repeated Noble St representative claims, most high schools have space for more students and many are seeing dramatic declines in enrollment. As we saw during the school closings debacle of 2013, CPS utilization numbers are way off as leadership and staff of schools report vastly different realities. Kennedy High School has a whole wing that is currently being rented out to an elementary school and could be re-opened. Kelly High School has lost over a thousand students in the past ten years. And Gage Park High School is dwindling down to a few hundred students, to name a few.

Thanks to CPS' ridiculous and unfeasible student-based budgeting system, even minor Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Shame on Noble Street: