Chicago Public Schools officials will phase out three South Side high schools over three years rather than shut them down this summer, an abrupt change to a long-standing plan to address schools that have struggled with enrollment and academics in one of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods.
Harper, Hope and TEAM Englewood high schools will remain open until current freshmen graduate under a revamped proposal announced Monday by CPS CEO Janice Jackson.
Robeson High School still would close this summer, pending a final vote from the Chicago Board of Education. Its building still would be demolished and replaced with an $85 million campus that’s expected to open to a freshman-only class next year.
The district’s partial reversal follows a number of heated public hearings on the proposed closings, where residents and community activists criticized the initial plan to close all four schools at the end of this academic term.
Students attending the three schools can remain as they wind down operations, or leave for surrounding schools, Jackson said.
“We did hear from students who felt just as strongly and just as passionately about the fact that they wanted another opportunity, as some of those folks who spoke out against this (school closing plan),” Jackson told the Tribune. “That’s why we’re trying to compromise here, and give people an opportunity to stay, who want to stay — but also give people an opportunity to leave, who want to leave.”
Harper, Hope and Robeson rank among Chicago’s most underenrolled, underperforming and cash-strapped neighborhood high schools. School leaders at Harper and Hope will face an immense challenge to offer students a basic level of education as successive classes of students leave those buildings.
“The only way that I’ve been able to analyze the situation is in the view of a cancer patient,” Asiaha Butler, president of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood and a member of a community steering committee CPS created to address Englewood’s high schools, said last week when asked about the prospect of the schools being closed in stages. “We’re going to have to triage this. That’s a scary thought, but these buildings and these schools and these institutions have been dying. That’s the reality of it. Something will really have to happen in an innovative way so they don’t continue to die if they’re phased out.”
No new freshmen will be assigned to the schools being phased out, meaning that by the time they close only seniors would be in attendance. The district said it would provide the schools with supplemental funding “to ensure core subjects are available and students can graduate with all required classes.”
CPS said a previously announced plan to expand the boundaries of four South Side neighborhood high schools — Chicago Vocational, Bogan, Phillips Academy and Gage Park — to take in students displaced by the proposed closings remains in place. That would give students the option of transferring into one of those programs, depending on where they live, before the new Englewood high school opens.
CPS also said it would continue to offer affected students numerous options and one-on-one attention to help find a building that has a better district performance rating.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who is seeking a third term in the February 2019 election and trying to rebuild relationships with African-American voters — has cast the plans for the new high schools as the most significant investment CPS has delivered to Englewood in decades, and one that will feed off nearby development that includes a retail center, a Whole Foods grocery and the rebuilt campus of Kennedy-King College.
The Chicago Teachers Union, along with allied politicians and community groups, has fought the school closings. While CTU leaders praised the revised plan announced Monday, they called on the district to invest additional resources at the three schools being phased out.
“Thanks to enormous pressure from parents, students, teachers and local residents, CPS has decided to back away from their draconian plan to close all of Englewood’s neighborhood high schools,” CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement.
“Clearly, the inherent racism of a plan to leave Englewood without a single neighborhood high school has provoked the type of public backlash that makes the mayor nervous as he nears another election cycle. Struggle, protest and organizing work — but now it’s time for CPS to embrace the larger demands of these school communities and schools across the city by providing the resources our schools and students need to thrive.”
The four Englewood high schools are challenged by chronic enrollment declines and dismal academics. This fall they enrolled about 450 students combined. The shrinking of the schools over many years has meant the largely African-American student bodies have access to fewer resources, classes and programs than are available at other schools.
CPS has told parents those problems could worsen if the schools were gradually phased out of existence instead of closed outright. The district says each school’s remaining students, with the proper support, can transfer and find a better high school experience elsewhere in the system.
“My personal opinion cannot be the only opinion that matters,” Jackson said when asked about the city’s about-face. “The outcry for these schools to remain open, and to allow the students to transition and graduate with their class, it was great.
“I have to own up to it when my opinion maybe differs from what the public, or the community thinks is the best thing to do. This is one of those cases.”
The district also said it would finance a study to evaluate the best options to reuse the Harper building. According to CPS, potential options could include an elementary school, a citywide high school with a specialty focus or community uses including job training centers or business incubators.
jjperez@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @PerezJr
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