Activists Organize Against School Closings

CHICAGO--A group of local education activists met Tuesday to figure out how to keep Chicago Public Schools from closing a Bronzeville elementary at the end of the school year and moving its students to a neighboring school.

Part of the Bronzeville Education Advocacy Movement’s strategy to keep Abbott Elementary School, 3630 S. Wells St., from being closed is to pressure certain Chicago heavyweights, including State Representatives Ken Dunkin and Ward 3 Alderman Pat Dowell, to support a recent proposal to put a moratorium on all school closings and reorganizations for a year.

“I think that would be huge, especially with the impact it has had on our community,” said Andrea Lee, education initiative coordinator for the Grand Boulevard Federation, one of several Bronzeville advocacy groups comprising BEAM.

Dunkin, whose 5th district contains Abbott Elementary, did not return calls asking if he plans to support the moratorium, proposed by State Representative Cynthia Soto last week. He did support a 2007 proposal by Soto that would have made it harder to close schools. That proposal was eventually tabled.

Dowell did not return calls either. Many of Abbott’s students live in her ward, though the school itself is in Ward 11. According to Lee, Dowell attended a Jan. 22 strategy session to keep Abbott open.

Abbott was among five schools CPS proposed consolidating on Jan. 16 because of under-enrollment. A CPS press release said the schools were being “severely underutilized, with Abbott operating at only 11 percent of its capacity.”

Under the proposal, Abbott’s 95 students would move to Hendricks Elementary School at 4316 S. Princeton Ave., less than a mile away. But the members of BEAM say that if Abbott must close, McClellan Elementary School at 3527 South Wallace St. should be the receiving school because it is higher-scoring and more diverse.

In fact, BEAM says CPS’s choice to send Abbott’s largely black student body to Hendricks—which, according to CPS.edu, is over 99 percent African-American—violates a federal desegregation decree dating back to the 1980s that CPS recently tried to have lifted.

“That’s funny,” Lee said. “CPS this month is trying to get out of its desegregation decree and yet when they had an opportunity to send students to a more diverse school and certainly a school that’s better performing, CPS has not done that.”

McClellan is roughly 60 percent Hispanic, 18 percent white and 10 percent black, according to CPS.edu. It has 61 fewer students than Hendricks and has 18 percent more students meeting or exceeding state academic standards.

CPS spokesman Malon Edwards said the district chose Hendricks because parents requested it last year when Abbott was proposed for consolidation and because it has more “physical space” than McClellan to accommodate incoming students. He also said that Abbott students will not be forced to go to Hendricks.

“If parents don’t want their children to go to Hendricks and the board approves the consolidation of Abbott, we will work with parents to put their children in the school of their choice,” including McClellan, Edwards said.

BEAM worries Abbott is being closed to make room for a charter school under Mayor Richard Daley’s Renaissance 2010 initiative to increase school choice and open 100 schools by next year. Critics of “Ren10” see it as a means of gentrifying certain low-income neighborhoods.

“Something is going to happen with the Abbott school building,” Lee said. “That would probably be the worst case scenario if CPS shut the school down and it reopened as a Ren10 school.”

GBF President Gregory Washington said Abbott should not be closed for under-enrollment because there is a Chicago Housing Authority family development across the street with over 100 vacant units which he says will soon be filled.

“It is my understanding that CHA wants to have these 100 [plus] units occupied in full by June,” Washington wrote in a letter to newly appointed Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman last month. “Why take away their neighborhood school?”

David McGraw, a parent of three current and five former Abbott students, said the school closing would be “devastating.”

“I feel it’s a shame [for] that school, as good as it has been for the community and for the children of the community, to be torn down,” McGraw, a former Abbott student himself, said. “Our kids have made great adjustments at Abbott school and they’ve made great progress.”

One of McGraw’s sons has autism and graduated from Abbott’s special education program last year.

“This child couldn’t even talk when we took him to that school,” McGraw said. “This child today speaks unbelievably and … he’s doing great in high school as a result of the schooling he got there at Abbott.”

McGraw said he does not want other children denied access to a good school.

“I feel that our children deserve an opportunity and an education like that just like anyone else’s children,” he said.

The Board of Education is expected to vote on school closings at its Feb. 25 regular meeting. The “Abbott family” will make one last plea to the board there, Lee said.