The decision to close 49 elementary schools in Chicago has now led to layoff notices being sent out to more than 660 district employees. That includes 420 teachers, many of whom have tenure but qualify for a layoff due to an unsatisfactory or satisfactory performance rating. The most recent union contract only protects members who are rated either excellent or superior.

With layoff notices going out, it appears that an ongoing controversy over the closure of schools that district officials are claiming were undersubscribed is finally simmering down, although additional cuts are expected in the coming year to allow Chicago Public Schools to close a budget deficit. Although an additional 600 teachers are qualified for transfers to other schools, it is unclear if enough spaces will be found to accommodate them all.

The final layoff tally might not be available until late in the summer when the principals finalize their staffing plans for the coming fall.

The district also Friday announced layoffs at five underperforming schools slated for overhauls, known as turnarounds. In an effort to raise the performance level of those schools, almost all employees are let go and new staff is hired.

CPS said 192 employees, 125 of them teachers, will lose their jobs as a result of those turnaround decisions, which, like the closings, were approved in May.

The Chicago Teachers Union has expressed concerns that budget cuts will result in additional layoffs.

All is not lost for teachers who receive layoff notices in the coming weeks. According to the Chicago Tribune, the district has a process for teachers who wish to find new jobs within CPS and the typical re-hire rate is about 60%. However, that might change this year as the $1 billion budget deficit means many departments are looking to shed workers rather than hire them.

CPS isn’t the only urban school district sending out layoff notices this month. On Friday, Philadelphia, which is dealing with its own budget crisis, announced that it will shed 76 district office employees last Friday which is expected to provide savings of nearly $32 million.

This week’s round of Philadelphia job losses is particularly modest in light of the one announced earlier last week. Then, 3,783 district employees – including teachers – were informed that they might not have a place in the district come September.

Combined, the job losses represent a 19.9 percent decrease in the 19,530-member workforce. As a result of the latest cutbacks, there will be fewer people to respond to the parents’ help line, field calls about tardy school buses, or handle students’ records. The district will end driver education and the live streaming of School Reform Commission meetings.

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Administrators of the Chicago Public Schools have given their final approval to the closure of 49 schools. The move, which was pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, means that thousands of students throughout the city will be transferred to different schools starting next year.

Members of the Board of Education were set to vote on four additional schools, but those candidates were withdrawn by CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett after it became clear that she didn’t have the votes to get the closures approved. On the whole, however, the Board vote appears to support Emanuel’s reform agenda of which the closures were a controversial part.

Critics were unconvinced, and many forcefully expressed objections during and after Wednesday’s board meeting. Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, one of several City Council members who spoke on behalf of schools in their wards, argued that schools serve as the glue of many neighborhoods.

“Closing a school is akin to closing a community,” Pawar said.

Byrd-Bennett, however, argued that communities didn’t need undersubscribed and underperforming schools that were taking money to maintain and run that could have gone to other schools. The vote to close 47 elementary schools and one high school were unanimously passed, while the vote to close Von Humboldt Elementary school passed with a vote of 4-2.

Not waiting for the vote to become final, the Chicago Teachers Union — staunch opponents of the closure — have already filed two lawsuits challenging them in federal court last week. The lawsuits seek to block the district from going through with the closures.

Although CTU President Karen Lewis said that she hoped the courts would step in, she already outlined a Plan B – making the union’s displeasure felt during the next mayoral election.

The decision to shut so many schools in Chicago, while unprecedented in number for a major urban center, did not occur in a vacuum. School systems in many large U.S. cities, facing similar challenges, have also been closing schools. In March, officials in Philadelphia voted to close 23 public schools, a list significantly pared from a much bolder proposal in the face of the same fierce resistance from parents, students and teachers that has roiled communities for months in Chicago. The Philadelphia cutbacks represented 1 in every 10 schools there, an even larger share than has now been marked for closing in Chicago.

One of the reasons for the fall in the number of students is the fact that middle-class African-American families are leaving the city in record numbers.

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Next week’s Chicago Board of Education vote on the closing of fifty-three elementary schools and one high school has prompted the Chicago Teachers Union to go to court, reports Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah from the Chicago Tribune.

The Chicago Teachers Union filed two lawsuits, one of which proposes a delay of the closings for at least a year, and the other which asks for a permanent ban on the closings.

The lawsuits state that the closings are unfair to students with disabilities and are discriminatory since the majority of the students affected are African-American.

Kristin Mayle, Chicago Teachers Union financial secretary and a special education teacher, says CPS does not have adequate time to properly handle the needs of special education students. Autistic students need a minimum of six months to acclimate to a new environment, which the district has not accounted for.

Critics charge that CPS has also not set up individual meetings with parents to revise individualized education programs or IEPs.  These problems make the district in violation of “Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act in its plan to close schools because it ‘does not permit a timely and orderly process’”.

Mayle also points out social dangers that can occur because of the schools closing:

 ”Students with learning disabilities are much more vulnerable to the pressures of gangs and violence in the neighborhood because of their lack of self-esteem and they want to fit in,” Mayle said. “So these transitions are going to be dangerous for some of these kids, and I don’t think CPS has spent enough time working on it.”

Chicago Public Schools state that the reason for closing the schools is that population decline in predominantly African-American neighborhoods has lead to under enrollment. One of the lawsuits claims racial discrimination in both past and present school closings.

 ”For the 72 schools that defendants have closed to date, African-American children make up more than 90 percent of the displaced children; and in currently proposed closings, they make up more than 80 percent of the displaced children,” the suit says. “Yet African-American children constitute only 42 percent of the children in public schools.”

As for the outcome of the lawsuits, it looks like it could be a “tough road in federal court” according to Brooke Whitted, a Northbrooke attorney who specializes in specal education law, and that it may depend on the plaintiff’s attorney’s skill level.

Lead attorney Tom Geoghegan hopes that the board members consider the complaints filed by hearing officers and do not vote in favor of the closings.

 ”It’s important, win or lose, to get the facts out to the public. I don’t think people really understand how much harm is going to be done to these children.”

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The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago Teachers Union will protest a proposal to close fifty-four schools by marching over three days beginning Saturday, May 18.

Kim Geiger and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah write that the Chicago Board of Education will vote on a plan to close fifty-three elementary school and one high school on May 22, with the CTU’s protests timed to lead up to the vote.

The district’s school closure plan is unpopular with not only teachers, but also with residents:

“A Tribune/WGN-TV poll found that 59 percent of Chicago voters don’t approve of the school closings proposal.”

School officials hired hearing officers who reviewed the proposal and declared that thirteen of the fifty-four schools should stay open. Details of the proposal were also criticized, as a retired judge serving as a hearing officer reported that the transition plan laid out for Mayo Elementary School’s students did not properly address special needs students.

CTU President Karen Lewis, who is expected to be reelected with her ‘CORE’ slate — which stands for “Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators” — for a second term of leadership this Friday, wants to shed light on what she calls ‘misguided corporate reforms’. Lewis’s slate is opposed by Tanya Saunders-Wolffe, who faces long odds to take control of the Union.

CTU has been in conflict with Chicago Public Schools and Mayor Rahm Emanuel constantly since Emanuel assumed office, which culminated in a September, 2012 strike that lasted weeks and even became an issue in the 2012 Presidential election. The battle also claimed schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard, who resigned just 3 weeks after the strike concluded, and has continued to the present including a lawsuit against closures and charges by CTU that Chicago Public Schools is engaging in ‘racist’ behavior with the plan.

But Chicago Public Schools isn’t giving up the fight, and they’re standing firm against the Union’s protest:

“Responding to CTU’s announcement, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said in a statement that the district “is determined to upend the status quo that threatens to keep another generation of our children trapped in under-resourced, underutilized schools where they are not getting the quality education they deserve.”"

The union also plans to protest the Walton Family Foundation’s donations, which funded some community meetings reagrding school closings, by busing protestors to Springfield where they will picket Walmart. Lewis famously quipped in November, 2012 that corporate donors for education reform were nothing but “dilittantes.”

In a long-term effort, the Union plans to have a voter registration campaign and political recruitment in hopes of pushing officials such as Mayor Emanuel out of office.

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Charter school supporters in Chicago, including parents of the students enrolled in them, are banding together to fight the perception that they’re the bad guy in the ongoing fight surrounding school closures in the city, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The group – called Charter Parents United – was formed in large part to counter the allegations made by the Chicago Teachers Union that they should bear the majority of the blame for the financial crisis gripping the local school system.

Mariana Chavez, one of the group’s organizers, believes that this kind of advocacy has become a necessity in light of CTU attacks. She said that a that a louder voice was needed to make the case to the city and its residents as to why charters deserve funding equity with the traditional public schools.

The catalyst appears to be the city’s plan to close down more than 50 elementary and high school programs because of underenrollment. In the subsequent fight over the plan, teachers and parents of students at effected schools have turned the finger on charters.

In response, district chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett has promised that no school closed this year will be handed over to a charter. CPS officials have also indicated they will place charters under greater academic scrutiny, gradually closing two underperforming charter schools and putting six others on a watch list.

Charters already have backing from several advocacy groups, including Stand for Children, INCS and New Schools for Chicago. Advocacy training from those groups, as well as by charter network operators, got charter parents more involved and eventually led to the formation of Charter Parents United, according to Beth Purvis, CEO of Chicago International Charter School.

Although the group is new, it can already count on a lot of practical and financial support from a lot of heavy hitters in the school reform movement. Included among them is the public relations firm ASGK Public Strategies, founded by President Barack Obama’s chief political guru David Axelrod.

According to Purvis, the group’s chief goal is to provide the public with a more balanced view. Until now, the feeling was that they were hearing too much from charter school opponents and not enough from those who have been helped by their growing presence in the city.

On Wednesday, the board will vote on a number of matters involving charters, including new locations for charter campuses and the addition of seats at existing charter schools. CPS will allow two new charter school operators to come into the district this year.

The fact that half of Wednesday’s board agenda pertains to charter-related business was noted by the CTU.

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Although American teachers unions have largely opposed the spread of charter schools around the country, at least some local branches have taken steps to organize charter schools even in the face of claims from operators that they are able to perform better and deliver better results to students without unionized staff.

One of the most significant such forays is happening in Chicago, where the city’s representatives of the American Federation of Teachers has approached the leaders of one of the largest charter school networks in the country to allow organizing activities on its campuses. Last month the AFT and the United Neighborhood Organization – which runs 13 charters in the city – agreed to an information swap, including turning over to the AFT the contact information of its 400 employees.

Furthermore, the UNO will also allow union organizers onto school campuses, all without taking a position on whether the group supports or opposes unionization.

Backers of charters, which are public schools run by independent groups, say freedom from union contracts enables innovation in areas like staffing and school calendars. Opponents say charters siphon money and students from struggling traditional public schools. Labor leaders say they want to organize charters because teachers there complain about low pay and poor working conditions, and because unionized teachers can negotiate favorable conditions for students, such as small class sizes. But others say the push has as much to do with unions’ declining membership.

Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, believes that these union approaches to charters are in some way part of a fight to stay relevant – or even just stay alive – in the new educational environment.

And he’s not wrong. Teachers unions have been dropping members year-on-year and the attrition only accelerated once more charter schools, funded by tax dollars but run independently, began opening across the country.

The charter-school drive comes as teacher unions face headwinds on numerous fronts, including layoffs and curbs to collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and other states. Last year, the NEA had about three million members, while the AFT had about 848,000 full dues-paying members, both declines of about 3% from 2011, according to data from the Department of Labor.

Nationally, about 12% of the approximately 5,000 charter schools in 2010 were unionized, according to the charter-school alliance. That includes charters in states that require most charter teachers be part of districts’ collective-bargaining policies. By comparison, more than half of all public-school districts in the U.S., including charters, were subject to collective bargaining in the 2007-08 school year, according to U.S. data.

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Although there doesn’t seem to be much room for compromise to be found in Rahm Emanuel’s statement that the time for negotiations over schools closures in Chicago are over, people protesting the closure of 53 elementary schools around the city continue to march against the move. The downtown rally earlier this week that was organized by opponents of the city’s push to streamline its operations by closing schools and merging campuses still took place — even if its impact is likely to be nil.

Rally attendees enthusiastically welcomed remarks by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis who continued to insist that the fact that the majority of the closures were going to be in African-American neighborhood was proof that the selection process was rife with racism.

As is usual with events of this kind, getting an accurate number of rally attendees proved a challenge. While organizers said more than 6,000 people showed up either for the rally or the subsequent march, the police put the crowd at between 600 and 900 people.

Those at the protest were loud but disciplined, sticking to a script the CTU provided earlier in the day in a news release. Most of the vitriol was aimed at Emanuel, with protesters carrying signs that included “Rahm’s brain is underutilized” and “School Closings = One Term Mayor.”

David Kaplan, a ninth-grade biology teacher at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center on the Northwest Side, said many teachers at the rally came even though their schools, like Von Steuben, are not on the closings list.

The march also included a sit-in on LaSalle Street which runs outside City Hall, and the police broke up the sit-in by leading the protesters away. There were no clashes between those participating and police officers and no arrests related to the sit-in were reported, although 127 tickets were issued at the scene.

The issue of school closures has been a hot button topic in the city for months – and the period prior to the public announcement of the final list was marked by extreme tension between Chicago Public Schools officials and teachers unions and other closure opponents.

More than 20,000 people attended the CPS hearings on the issue and the plan to close 53 elementary schools and one high school was greeted by heated rhetoric from both sides.

The long-awaited announcement of how many schools the district wants to close fueled a fresh round of opposition from aldermen and community leaders. The CTU, which wants a moratorium on closings, has been preparing parents and community groups for civil disobedience acts like the sit-in on LaSalle.

Earlier Wednesday, in comments to reporters during an unrelated news conference, Emanuel said he’s moving forward on the closings plan and negotiations were over.

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The list of Chicago schools that will be closed in order to meet financial obligations of the cash-strapped school district has been made public. If district leaders hoped that the release would calm the tempers of those who have been opposed to the closures all along, they were greatly mistaken. Harsh words both for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools officials flew almost as soon as the list was published.

In total, 61 schools around the city will be shuttered, mainly in the South and West sides where the majority of the population is African-American and where student numbers have been falling for over a decade. The shutdown is anticipated to affect roughly 30,000 students from kindergarten to 8th grade who will be transferred to other schools nearby.

Prodded by Emanuel, officials have been working for months to downsize the facility footprint of the district, which they say faces a $1 billion projected deficit next year. “We have resources that are spread much too thin,” said Todd Babbitz, the district’s chief transformation officer.

Savings from closing schools, though, won’t kick in immediately. Officials estimate school upgrades and enhanced security and other transition costs will add $233 million to expenses in the short term, most of it paid for through bond debt at a time when the district’s credit rating has dropped. Some of the increased costs will also be covered by staff cuts from schools that close.

The district estimates that it will realize more than half a billion dollars in savings over the next ten years. However, for many parents, these are savings expensively bought, since for their kids it would mean not only a displacement from their familiar environment but also a longer commute to school through some of the most dangerous and gang-ridden neighborhoods in the city.

For students like Jayshawn Vinson, the closure of their nearby elementary schools means that they will now be walking nearly a mile to the new school they’ve been assigned – the commute taking place mostly along the Martin Luther King Drive, where crime is a daily occurrence.

Opponents of the closures have also noted that the majority of the schools that are being shut down are in African-American neighborhoods, prompting calls from activists accusing Emanuel of racism.

As WBBM Newsradio’s Mike Krauser reports, to hear some tell it on the West Side, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a racist liar who doesn’t care about the kids. And they’re just getting started.

“I don’t see any Caucasians being moved, bussed, or murdered in the streets as they travel along gang lines, or stand on the steps of a CPS school,” said activist Wendy Matil Pearson as opponents of the school closing plans protested outside Horatio May Elementary Community Academy in the Austin neighborhood.

The post Chicago Announces List of School Closures, Opponents Fume appeared first on Education News.

The list of schools slated for closure in Chicago is due by the end of this month, but many expect it to be published sooner. Now in anticipation of it becoming public, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett is putting in extra effort to assure parents, teachers and other stakeholders that the district will keep its commitments of making the transition painless and making sure existing schools are equipped to handle the new arrivals.

Among the chief concerns expressed by parents and teachers was the lack of special education spaces available around to district to take all the qualified students who are expected to be displaced by the closures. Byrd-Bennett said that expanding the accommodations available to special needs students is a priority and reaffirmed the promise that all will have somewhere to go next year where their needs will be met.

She added that the school buildings that will be taking in new students will be refurbished by the start of the next academic year, including getting air conditioners — something that was a worry for those protesting the closures.

Furthermore, the additional expenses of the changes should be covered from the savings of not having to run half-empty and undersubscried schools within two years of the closures.

CPS would not release specific figures, Byrd-Bennett said, because she hadn’t finalized her list of schools to close. That list is due by March 31 but expected sooner.

An independent commission Byrd-Bennett tasked with helping her decide recommended that she close, consolidate and academically turn around no more than 80 schools of the 129 that are eligible. And a recent district request for vendors solicited moving and other transitional services for school buildings for 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 or 129 schools.

Byrd-Bennett has often said that she relies on her experience as a mother and a grandmother when she makes decisions about CPS, and it was in that role that she sent a letter to the district families with special needs students reiterating that the schools to which their kids will be assigned have the capability of fulfilling each one’s Individualized Education Program, a learning plan designed specifically for each student.

She added that the new schools will get all the support from the district they require to absorb the new students and provide them with assistance they need to make the transition a success.

Earlier Tuesday, parents of CPS special-education students made an impassioned plea to Byrd-Bennett to spare the schools on her list with high populations of special-education students. Of the 129 schools, 39 have special-education cluster programs that serve children with profound and severe disabilities. Three serve special-education students exclusively. The list accounts for more than 6,000 special-education students.

Parents said closing the schools would be detrimental to their children.

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Two urban school districts are preparing to tackle problems stemming from their revenue shortfalls and a falling student population by closing and merging schools, even if they have to do it over the protests of their local teachers unions.

In Philadelphia, where the municipal finances are especially precarious, administration officials are preparing to vote on the closure of 27 schools. However, according to Philadelphia Inquirer, parents, together with the city’s teachers unions, are banding together to prevent the planned vote.

Today is the decision day for the five members of the School Reform Commission who meet to decide not only the fate of the 27 schools, but also a number of related issues such as program merges and grade changes. Since the meeting had been announced, two additional schools have been put on the “to close” list, but the vote on their ultimate fate will not be held this week.

Security should be tight. Anti-closing protesters interrupted the last two SRC meetings.

If the SRC endorses even most of the proposals, the result would be among the largest mass school closings in the country, with one in eight city schools shutting its doors permanently in June.

The action was important enough to draw AFT president Randi Weingarten, who said she was “standing with the community, which is standing for its kids. Kids need allies, and community needs a voice, and Philly is proving that over and over again.”

The closing plan is part of a scheme “to essentially destroy a public education system for reckless alternatives,” the union chief said.

While the AFT is fighting its fight in Philadelphia, Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel has signaled that he will begin following the recommendations presented in a report by the commission charged with studying the issues troubling the city’s schools. The Commission on School Utilization found that the district could go ahead and close down 80 schools in the city, without suffering reduction in the quality of instruction or extensive overcrowding issues.

The commission was put together by the Chicago Public School CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, and she should feel justified in her selection since the findings appear to be an unqualified victory for her plans to shutter underutilized school buildings. The panel confirmed her assertions that even though the number of schools picked for closure at the same time is unprecedented, CPS is well positioned to make the transition as smooth as possible.

The district is working off a preliminary list of 129 schools that could be closed. Clark declined to give a specific number of how many might be closed, but the report indicates that CPS has the capacity to shutter 60 to 70 schools, and that others could have their staff completely replaced, a process known as turnaround, or share space with other schools including privately run charters.

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