By George N. Schmidt

One of the items that never got to the public participation portion of the agenda of the April 27 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education was “Chopin — combining Chopin with Aspira Charter School.” Patricia Trudeau was signed up to speak, but because, as usual, the school board had spent much of its time chatting with the earlier people on the public participation list, there was no mention of Chopin (located at 2450 W. Rice) at the meeting.

Substance has learned that CEO Arne Duncan has already promised that Aspira will also get part of Chopin Elementary School as its charter expands. The people from Chopin were at the school board meeting to argue against Duncan’s proposal, noting that the Aspira school is a high school, and that their children are elementary children, and that putting the two groups together in one building is not a good idea.

Although Arne Duncan, talking out of one side of his mouth, will undoubtedly have a talking point with which to answer Chopin’s argument, he will more likely counter with something about how Chopin is “underutilized.” Ignoring the fact that Arne himself has authored a Board Report to underutilize Chicago’s newest school building (allowing Aspira to put two 300-stduent “schools” inside the New Haugan, which has a minimal capacity of 900!), the board’s doubletalk and most of the CEO’s sound bites depend for their viability on the careful manipulation of information and deliberate distortions and lies. Thus, it’s OK to underutilize the New Haugan (if it’s for a politically connected charter school approved by City Hall), but it’s not OK to underutilize Chopin (or Douglas, or a half dozen other schools Duncan’s shuttered in the past two years on that excuse).

Another argument the Chopin community might consider (not that arguments matter in the ruthless game of power politics that’s really behind all the Aspira expansions) is that Duncan’s already proved that putting a “high school” inside an elementary helps destroy the elementary school.

Although the “North Lawndale College Preparatory Charter School” has very little to show for its six years of existence, Arne Duncan repeatedly cites it as a model for urban school reform, telling audiences across the nation that “North Lawndale” “sends 100 percent of its students to college.”

Arne might add that North Lawndale also destroys public elementary schools.

North Lawndale currently shared an address with the Howland Elementary School, 1616 S. Spaulding. But Arne Duncan’s is closing Howland this year because it is “failing” — despite a relentless campaign of destabilization against Howland by the Duncan administration and its predecessor. Part of that campaign has been the housing of a high school in the elementary building holding Howland.

The people of Chopin have a few weeks before Howland Elementary ceases to exist and North Lawndale takes over the entire building. The North Lawndale story deserves a very careful look by anyone who is watching the ruthless politics of privatization and charterization from the street level in Chicago’s poorest communities. 