Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has made increasing funding for public education his cornerstone issue. Last spring, he asked Springfield for $1 billion to help “fully fund” Chicago Public Schools. He also asked the Chicago Board of Education to approve a short-term loan. When the board and the district didn’t follow his orders, he asked CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to resign, then all members of school board announced they were stepping down. Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union began negotiating its next teachers contract, and Chicagoans voted in their first-ever school board election.
All of this drama has Chicagoans — even those without children in CPS schools — worried about the future of the district. Government officials and other stakeholders argued in our section this year about how we got here and what should be done. Parents, teachers and students also shared their personal stories about how this turmoil is affecting them.
Here is a look back in excerpts.
Jan. 3: Charlotte Badgley-Green, “Here’s what is wrong with CPS’ high school admissions process”
Getting into a “good” high school is life or death. That’s what all teachers have drilled into my classmates and me since we knew what high school was.
“If you don’t get into a good high school, you won’t get into a good college, and then your life will be over!” That’s what they say to us in so many words, imprinting it on our minds and souls.
But that amount of pressure is placed on the backs of 12- and 13-year-olds. Can you imagine getting up every day, worrying about changing social dynamics, your appearance, puberty, your homework, sports and all of your extracurriculars, social media, and what high school you’re going to? It’s definitely more complicated than the 1980s, folks.
“Sure, but getting into high school all over the country is stressful,” naysayers argue. “Why are Chicago Public Schools students so whiny about it?”
There is, however, a reason for all the carrying on. Many of them, actually.
CPS has a systemic issue with discrepancies between white and nonwhite high school applicants, causing most top high schools — Walter Payton, Whitney Young and Lane Tech — to have more white students than of any other race. Chicago is a diverse city with no large majority of any race. So why are there so many white students at top schools?
Sept. 25: Pedro Martinez, “I’m not resigning as CPS chief, and we’re not closing any schools”
I’m not naive — this is Chicago, after all, and I know there is always politics. But it’s deeply disappointing to navigate a fusillade of outright lies, part of a concerted campaign to discredit me and my leadership team. Our focus should be on delivering for our kids.
That’s in fact what we celebrated on Sept. 18 as our board unanimously approved our new equity-focused five-year strategic plan to accelerate student learning and strengthen our neighborhood schools.
Hours later, Mayor Brandon Johnson asked for my resignation. I declined. It was not a rebuke of the mayor but rather a decision to pursue our vision for the future of CPS.
I have chosen not to resign because doing so would risk creating a leadership vacuum and instability that could disrupt the strategic progress we’ve made to date. I am the seventh CPS CEO in the past decade. A leadership change is extraordinarily disruptive to any school system, generating a domino effect of change among key positions that can stall progress and diminish opportunities for students. Our long-term vision and initiatives are at a critical juncture, and leaving now would jeopardize continuity and our momentum.
Sept. 30: Stacy Davis Gates, “Chicago’s public schools have never been fully funded”
Our schools have always been underfunded, because they, like our highways and former public housing, are intertwined with the project of segregation in the city.
In 1863, the Chicago school board mandated separate instruction for Black and white youths. Some 90 years later, Chicago schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis instituted half-day double shifts and later makeshift wagons stationed in parking lots to serve as schools for Black children rather than provide them access to the resources at white schools.
Forty years after that, city leaders set forward a “revolutionary” vision for CPS — to shut them down. Renaissance 2010, whose architect was one-time CPS CEO Arne Duncan, closed schools and opened privately run charter schools.
It created the opportunity for people like Juan Rangel, who led a charter school network, to replace beloved community schools with enterprises run outside the accountability of local school councils and government oversight.
By 2013, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to close another 50 schools, 42 of which served a student population that was more than 75% Black. North Side schools frequently have more access to arts programming than their South Side counterparts, and WBEZ reports that only 10% of schools where Black students are the largest percentage of the student body have a librarian.
The impact of these decisions isn’t just test scores and budget items. Anyone can hear both the talent and the pain from artists such as Lil Durk, whose music is a soundtrack to the abandonment of our Black and brown neighborhoods.
Our youths refer to their communities as “the trenches” because the battle against disinvestment is a fight against the deprivation and daily struggles they face.
Oct 14: Forrest Claypool, “Chicago Public Schools is losing the hard-won progress it’s made over 25 years”
For a quarter century, from 1995 to 2019, leading Chicago businesses, not-for-profits, philanthropies, universities and civic organizations united behind two mayors to successfully reform a public school system considered by many to be the worst in the nation. In 1989, as Mayor Richard M. Daley assumed office, the city’s public schools had been roiled by several teacher strikes in 18 years, historic dropout rates, and bankruptcy. Student test scores ranked among the lowest in the country.
After grassroots reforms in the early 1990s failed, the Illinois legislature transferred appointive power for school governance to Chicago’s mayor in 1995.
Over the next 25 years, mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel rebuilt or replaced hundreds of dilapidated neighborhood schools; ended the insidious practice of “social promotions,” in which children who had not mastered grade level curriculum were promoted up a ladder of failure; and replaced a one-size-fits-all public school monopoly with a system of diverse choice, accompanied by rigorous accountability standards.
Led by the University of Chicago, the city’s colleges conducted research into education strategies, unlocking new insights that drove progress. The Chicago Public Education Fund, a business-funded not-for-profit, paid for the recruitment and training of top principals to lead schools. Foundations funded experimental new entries, such as the Noble Network of Charter Schools, which became the system’s top performer with a high percentage of minority and low-income children.
Failing schools were targeted for new leadership and additional resources, from tutors to math and reading specialists. Freshmen were tracked for slippage, with swift interventions.
By 2007, for the first time, a majority of CPS students were passing the statewide exams in reading, science and math, rising to nearly two-thirds the following year. By 2019, graduation rates had reached 82%.
Oct. 25: Froylan Jimenez, “How do we encourage more school board accountability?”
Last week, the Chicago City Council called a public hearing summoning the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, the seven outgoing members of the Chicago Board of Education and the six recently appointed members of the new board to discuss the school district’s dire fiscal situation and budgetary concerns. To his credit, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and his team attended and fielded questions for several hours. Sadly, not one single board member decided to show up and take ownership of their roles or actions.
The seven outgoing members of the school board resigned amid pressure to approve a high-interest loan and to dismiss Martinez. Presumably, the new members would have had to consider these actions before agreeing to be appointed. Amid the allegations and speculation, Chicagoans are left wondering what really happened. That is the opposite of good government accountability.
Members of the Chicago Board of Education have to set policy decisions for 634 elementary and high schools that will affect more than 323,000 CPS students and their families. Those same members also make budgetary decisions on billions of dollars that affect all Chicagoans. This is why Chicagoans deserve more transparency and accountability in the midst of the Chicago Board of Education’s abrupt shakeup. The way the board’s “transition” unfolded only generated more uncertainty and district instability at a time when sound fiscal management, pragmatic solutions and leadership are urgently needed.
Dec 6: Jemalyth Fabara, “The Chicago school where I teach is closing. Why does this keep happening?”
Why weren’t staff and families involved in talks about closing the schools they rely on? Maybe leadership knew they were not going to hear what they wanted to hear from parents or staff. If you’re making a bad decision, and you know that if you bring others into the conversation they will tell you that you are wrong, you just don’t include them. You go ahead and make the choice.
There is no easy way to close seven schools, but there definitely could have been a way that caused less anxiety and strife.
Acero kids, like a lot of our kids in Chicago, come from homes with greater academic and emotional needs. Adding something as big as not just one school closing, but seven schools closing, is a huge blow. What is going to happen to those kids? Most would think the answer is simple: transfer them to another neighborhood school.
However, looking deeper into this “simple solution” we see, in our neighborhood at least, that the schools to which the Acero network is trying to transfer our kids are already crowded, not funded correctly and understaffed. Instead of looking for an alternative way to support our students and families, Acero leadership for the most part already decided that this school is not making them money, and so it’s not feasible to keep it open. Their proposal instead is to shove over 1,000 kids into other schools at the end of the school year.
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