Pat Barcas
Staff writer
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013
     The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is planning a grassroots style protest this weekend of school closures in the city, schools they say are being unfairly targeted because they are in black or Latino neighborhoods.
     The CTU will canvas seven neighborhoods throughout the city Saturday, Jan. 19, ranging in times from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Save our Schools protests aim to curb the closing of more than a dozen Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which are considered for closure to sew up the nearly $1 billion CPS budget gap.
     The CPS has said that the underperforming schools in question are also underutilized, and therefore students could be better served by being bussed to other nearby schools.
     CTU President Karen Lewis disagrees, and says the job cuts associated with the closures are trumped by the more serious worry of children not receiving the education they deserve.
     Lewis spoke out after a CPS “Interim Report” was released Jan. 10 that said 140,000 students had left the district in the last decade.
     “We dispute CPS’s assertion that the district has lost more than 140,000 students in the last decade and therefore the city is faced with an under utilization crisis. I have been a teacher for 25 years and I can tell you first-hand there were never 500,000 students enrolled in public schools during that time. Their use of numbers is disingenuous across the board and this crisis is a manufactured one.
     The CTU maintains that school closings take resources that students deserve, destabilize the neighborhoods, and increase racial inequity in the schools.
     Lewis said that closing neighborhood schools is the foundation for kids going down the wrong path, leading to spikes in violence, like the 500 plus homicide year that 2012 was in Chicago.
     “What is clear to us after reading the Commission’s recommendations is that the public deserves a full facilities plan with a complete vision of where CPS is headed. Taxpayers deserve accountability, transparency and real voice in how the city discards public assets and to whom they are entrusted. School closings signal that this administration has no real commitment to developing the communities where those schools served our most vulnerable children,” said Lewis. “It is clear certain neighborhoods are the primary targets of CPS school actions. School closings exacerbate the problems of foreclosures, joblessness and violence. We are troubled that this report still lacks a clear safety plan and given the spike in violent crime in Chicago this is extremely problematic.”
     The canvassing locations for the protests this Saturday, Jan. 19 are as follows:
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Stockton Elementary 4420 N. Beacon St.
– 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with Albany Park Neighborhood Council, APNC office, 4749 N. Kedzie Ave., floor 2.
– 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Blocks Together office, 3455 W. North Ave.
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Lewis Elementary, 1431 N. Leamington Ave.
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Kenwood Oakland Community Organization office, 4242 S. Cottage Grove.
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Ruggles Elementary, 7831 S. Prairie Ave.
– 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Fenger High School, 11220 S. Wallace St.

Pat Barcas’ e-mail address is pat@foxvalleylabornews.com.