Progress Illinois

Englewood residents are not yet sure what will become of their six neighborhood schools on Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) list to shut down or relocate in June.

But South Side community members at a Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) meeting Tuesday night said if the Chicago Board of Education approves CPS’ school action plan, they want all shuttered schools to become village centers for the neighborhood.

“We do not want any of our institutions closed in the community, but if they are going to close it, at least let it be reopened for something that can serve the community,” said community leader Aysha Butler with R.A.G.E. Read more »

Senate confirmation hearings for Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker’s nomination for U.S. Secretary of Commerce are scheduled for Thursday, but workers from the her family-owned hotel chain are already voicing their opposition to the selection.

“This is not somebody we want in Washington; this is a lady whose business model hurts workers,” said Demetrius Jackson, 25, a lifelong Chicagoan and convention service houseman at the Hyatt Regency Chicago for six years.

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The West Side leg of the Chicago Teachers Union's (CTU) three-day march against school closings saw dozens of parents, teachers and education activists blocking traffic throughout the area's streets Monday, chanting “Save Our Schools!”

“We are marching to keep our schools open,” said Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the CTU, at the launch of Monday’s West Side march at Elizabeth Peabody Elementary School, at 1444 West August Blvd.

Peabody is one of 54 schools slated for closure under a CPS proposal to shutter, consolidate and turnaround a record-breaking number of schools at the end of this school year. The district says it is attempting to address a $1 billion deficit and “utilization crisis” of more than 100,000 empty seats. The proposed plan has incited massive protests and outrage throughout Chicago.

“If some of these schools don’t come off the closure list, there’s going to be a ton of outrage and moral indignation from people all across the city,” said Sharkey in an interview with Progress Illinois. “But how do you do get your point across to a board that doesn’t really listen? This thing is being driven by the mayor, and the mayor doesn’t care.”

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On the 59-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision to end segregation in public schools, Brown v. Board of Education, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released a report claiming widespread segregation still exists in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the district’s administration is doing nothing to address it.

In the 2011-2012 school year, 69 percent of African-American students in CPS were in schools with more than 90 percent of the student body composed of the same ethnicity, according to Friday’s report, titled “Still Separate, Still Unequal” (PDF).

“The newest CPS leadership frames the district’s current inequities as an inevitable result of demographic trends,” the report reads. “Their fraudulent attempts to absolve corporate reform of any culpability in our separate and unequal school system are an extension of the resistance that enforcement of desegregation faced in the decades after Brown v Board.”

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