Chicago Public Schools students and their parents will experience heightened stress next year if President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan succeeds with his mass deportation plan in Chicago once Trump takes office. For Senn Arts students and parents in particular, this anxiety would be vinegar poured on top of the gaping gash in the respected and diverse fine arts magnet school.
Several weeks ago, Senn High School unexpectedly declared that it will gut its competitive magnet fine arts program. Instead of Senn Arts students taking two art classes five days a week, they will take only one. CPS and Senn said the cut was in response to a CPS audit that found some students did not “meet graduation requirements,” among them physical education.
After declining the district’s buyout offer, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said through his attorney Bill Quinlan that he wants to “see that the 325,305 students and parents get the benefit of what they bargained with him.” I find that quote ironic. My daughter is a freshman in Senn Arts’ visual arts program. We are among those 325,305 students and parents, and what Senn Arts and CPS are now deciding for my daughter’s education is not what we bargained for nor a benefit.
The reason the Senn administration provided parents for the cuts regarding physical education credits does not make sense nor provide full transparency. Senn does offer gym to its students, but Senn Arts dance students meet their physical education requirement with their five-days-a-week dance classes. The state of Illinois in 2018 lowered the required days for physical education from five to three. Now dance teachers at Senn Arts will need PE certification to teach dance classes and for the dance classes to be accepted for PE credits for dance students.
While Martinez refuses to break his contract, Senn and CPS are breaking their contract to Senn Arts parents and students — a contract provided in online and print materials along with an open house. (Parents and guardians like me have called Senn Arts a “bait and switch.”) We signed that contract with our registration and Senn Arts fees.
These proposed changes ultimately weaken the education and educational experience of Senn Arts students. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, arts in school create and strengthen empathy and help students process negative emotions and trauma. The arts also improve learning and academics. In an article for education policy journal Education Next, Daniel H. Bowden and Brian Kisida point out that writing scores improve, with those scores rising significantly for English language learners, which Senn and other Chicago public schools teach.
Making Senn Arts more of a career-focused education program limits the amount of Advance Placement and International Baccalaureate classes that Senn Arts students take along with their art classes. Past Senn Arts students have been accepted into such noted schools as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt and Loyola University Chicago. These alterations to Senn Arts not only affect the students’ art education but also their education overall.
CPS argues that it already has another arts-based high school — the Chicago High School for the Arts — to meet the needs of students wanting to deepen their art study and practice. However, like Senn Arts, ChiArts accepts only a limited number of talented students. Cutting Senn Arts would remove a second public high school option for students, leaving students who do not get into ChiArts only the private Chicago Academy for the Arts as their other option. Yet that is not an option for every student.
Because of the Chicago Academy for the Arts’ high tuition, many low-income and financially stressed parents could not have their children attend the Chicago Academy for the Arts even with financial aid. Stripping Senn Arts for students like my daughter who do not have financial privilege limits their choice and does not provide equity.
I have multiple sclerosis, and the avalanche of my medical bills gobbles my family’s finances. Last year, we knew Senn Arts would provide our daughter with a stellar academic and arts-based public education. Plus, Senn Arts was my daughter’s first choice.
Instead of making Senn Arts like other high schools without an arts focus, Senn High School could incorporate a block schedule starting next year. Currently, CPS’ selective-enrollment schools such as Jones College Prep use a block schedule. Despite longer course periods, a block schedule would benefit Senn Arts along with Senn’s IB and major studies students.
Block scheduling provides several student benefits, such as increased GPA and standardized test scores, according to an article from the School Superintendents Association. Block schedules also help keep “at-risk” students and fine arts courses in schools. When she was a Rochester High School senior in Rochester, Illinois, Emmy Award winner Regan Ernst wrote in The State Journal-Register that she found block schedules increased time management for teachers, decreased student stress levels and enriched class-engagement activities.
Senn Arts can be maintained, but only if CPS and Senn are open to the concerns and ideas from parents and students. Using a block schedule for Senn High School would be one step toward achieving Mayor Brandon Johnson’s goal of educational equity throughout all of CPS.
Laura Durnell is a Chicago nonfiction and fiction writer whose work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Women’s Media Center and several literary journals. She teaches writing at Wilbur Wright College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. She also writes the Substack newsletter Bluestocking Bombshells.
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