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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A bill to put a to put a temporary moratorium on school closings
advanced in the Senate Education Committee Tuesday, however it was
“shelled” and all language was stripped out, according to a spokeswoman
for Sen. William Delgado (D-Chicago), the legislation’s chief sponsor.
President Barack Obama kicked off his second term today with a speech that covered a plethora of progressive issues, including same-sex marriage, preserving the middle class, sustainable energy and climate change.
Shortly after election polls closed Progress Illinois checked in on
the candidates in Illinois’ 12th Congressional District, where the race
turned nasty through 
Diane Ravitch, who was assistant secretary of education under George
H.W. Bush and then became a national spokeswoman against the
so-called education reform movement, says that Chicago has taken the
lead on education reform – and the revolt against such policies.