State Rep. Cynthia Soto has introduced a major state legislation – House Bill 363.
The bill would fundamentally restructure the way decisions are made about school facilities in Chicago and would create a comprehensive Chicago School Facilities Plan that currently doesn’t exist.
The proposed law requires a one-year moratorium on all school closings, consolidations, phase-outs, and turnarounds, while the state legislature develops a new framework for making decisions about these facilities issues, as well as decisions about which schools will be repaired and which communities most need new school buildings.
Parents initially approached Soto from Peabody and Carpenter Elementary Schools in her district this winter, after they were slated respectively for being “closed” or “phased out.”
“I found that more than 60 percent of students at Peabody and Carpenter were meeting state achievement standards, while these schools served more than 90 percent low-income students,” Soto said. “Their accomplishments compared with only 40 percent of students at the Sherman and Harvard Elementary Schools who were meeting state standards,” Soto said.
Carpenter and Peabody are in danger of being closed for “under-utilization,” with enrollments of 324 and 258 students. Yet the Board of Education’s Web site states that an elementary school should have “no more than 350 students.”
The Chicago Board rates Peabody Elementary School as only being 35 percent utilized, leaving the impression that more than half of the school is empty. However, this calculation ignores the school’s two computer labs, science room, arts room, teacher work area and one regular classroom that is used as a gym (since the school has no real gym), according to Federico Flores, the school’s principal.
Based on the school system’s own research, students who change schools frequently lose ground academically.
“Closing a neighborhood school often means long trips out
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