Progress Illinois

In the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Cottage Grove Ave. serves as the dividing line between two violent gang territories, according to area residents.

And concerned community members say a Chicago Public Schools’ proposal to close John Fiske Elementary and send its students to Austin Sexton Elementary means students will be forced to to travel across the invisible barrier.

Cottage Grove, according to the proposal’s opponents, is a boundary not to be taken lightly.

“That’s a line you just don’t cross,” said Randy Pouncy, 22, a Sexton Elementary alumnus who said he’s been shot at too many times to count. “It’s so dangerous.”

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Vowing to keep up the fight to stop a Chicago Public Schools’ proposal to close more than 50 schools, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis unveiled plans Monday for protests that will include three days of marches beginning this weekend.

Lewis, who was joined by parents as well as neighborhood and labor activists, held a press conference in front of William & Charles H. Mayo Elementary School on the city’s South Side.  Mayo is one of 54 schools slated for closure by CPS, but was one of 13 plans rejected last week by an independent panel of hearing officers.  

A final vote by the Chicago Board of Education is still needed for CPS to move forward with its plan, which if approved would be the country's largest number of closings by a single school district at one time. The Board of Education will vote on the proposal May 22.

Lewis, who has called for a moratorium on all school closings, said it is not too late for the Illinois General Assembly to intervene, adding that the CPS proposal would be detrimental to the education of many of the students the district claiims to be helping.

“They’re bad public policy,” Lewis said. “We have been looking at school closings for over 10 years, they have not improved education, will not improve education, and even though they say it over and over and over again, there is no proof.”

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Ald. Deborah Graham (29th) said she was upset to see three of her neighborhood schools "pitted" against each other at a Chicago Public Schools' hearing last night regarding the possible closure of May and Armstrong elementary schools.

Under CPS' proposal, students at the two Austin schools would fold into Leland Elementary, which would take over May's current building in the fall.

“Tonight was the first time I really witnessed this process pitting schools against each other,” Graham said. "It is disheartening, and it puts each of the schools in an awkward situation. How can we create the comradery that we need to have a successful school? I think that’s in real jeopardy." Read more »

More than 200 students enrolled at Fuller Park's Francis Parkman Elementary School will be asked to travel six blocks and cross East Garfield Blvd. to attend their welcoming school, Englewood's Jesse Sherwood Elementary School, if the Chicago Board of Education approves a proposal by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

East Garfield Blvd., according to attendees of Friday’s public forum on the school action, serves as the dividing line between two South Side neighborhoods and gang territories.

“The children are being asked to cross an invisible barrier,” said Carla Smith, 48, a lifelong Chicagoan and 2nd grade teacher of three years at Parkman Elementary.

Smith, one of approximately 75 people who attended the hearing, pleaded with the hearing's mediator to listen to the voice of the community.

“I’m scared for the kids; they can’t cross that line.”

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