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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West Side parents and activists have pledged to vote out Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his “rubber stamp” aldermen who have not stood with the community against school closings.
Energy was high outside the Chicago Board of Education meeting
Wednesday morning as education activists, union members, teachers,
students and parents gathered in anticipation of a vote that could close
a staggering amount of schools across the Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
district. 
Education activists headed to Springfield early Wednesday morning to lobby for a moratorium on school closings. Their campaign for legislative action comes on the same day as the Chicago Board of Education votes on a
proposal to close a record-breaking number of public schools in Chicago. Meanwhile, the Illinois General Assembly has less than one month left in the spring session, which ends May 31.
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.
In the interest of fostering a broad educational community in one of Chicago’s most 