By Jesse Sharkey

In Chicago, it is becoming nearly impossible to simply claim that more resources (smaller class sizes; expanded curricular and extra-curricular programs; and other traditional demands for high school improvement), better treatment of teachers (pay and benefits comparable to the suburbs), and improved conditions in society as a whole would improve Chicago’s general high schools. Racial segregation — apartheid, as it’s being called since the publication of Jonathan Kozol’s latest book — has been ruled off the agenda for public discussion of what ails Chicago high schools.

Stripping resources from Senn High School

At Senn, in public the CPS was talking up a vision of a ‘campus’ full of small ‘schools of choice.’ But for the past year, Senn has been forced to accept only one ‘choice’ — the military academy — despite repeated rejections of that option by every segment of the community. At various points during the campaign to save Senn, no lesser figures than Schools Chief Executive Officers (CEO) Arne Duncan and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky promised that the purpose of bringing the Navy to Senn was not to hurt the school, but to ‘bring educational opportunities’ to north side students. Both Duncan and Schakowsky promised at a large public meeting on December 9, 2004, that they would not allow resources to be stripped away from Senn High School. Congresswoman Schakowsky told the meeting she would personally monitor the situation to make sure Senn wasn’t deprived of what it needed to do its job.

In reality, Duncan has overseen the stripping of resources from Senn and Schakowsky has ignored the plight of Senn this school year, despite the fact that her Chicago office (which she shares with Alderman Smith) is within walking distance of the school.

Since the 2005-2006 school year began, educational opportunities are precisely what are being taken away from Senn students. As of the end of the first quarter of the 2005-2006 school year, Senn High School has more than 1,500 students. The “Rickover Naval Academy” inside the Senn building has fewer than 120 students (and has reportedly been losing students since school opened in September).

Yet all the resources have been going away from Senn and into Rickover. Since the naval academy has come to Senn, we have seen the following changes:

• Senn lost two computer labs — the math/science lab, as well as the English lab. Although Senn was specifically promised that Senn would not lose labs, Senn was approaching the third month of school, and the school board has still not installed the switches that would allow Senn to open other labs.

• Senn’s faculty is twenty positions smaller. A combination of several factors — negative publicity (which resulted in lower enrollment), a hiring freeze, and the elimination or scaling back of several programs — has produced a school with its highest ever overcrowding (class sizes greater than ever before), and a thinned-out faculty.

• Several Senn teachers (most whose rooms are in the vicinity of the rooms occupied by Rickover) had much of the contents of their rooms thrown out or stolen during the summer, when Rickover was in command of much of that part of the Senn building. Missing materials included electronic equipment, teaching materials, laminated posters, and the contents of the teachers’ desks. In some cases, teaching materials that had been assembled — often at the teachers’ expense — over years were apparently thrown out in the Rickover conversion.

• It’s clear that not all the inhabitants of Senn’s building get equal attention: Senn’s marquis sign — purchased with money raised by the Senn Local School Council (LSC) — has been painted over to read: “Senn Campus, home of the Rickover Naval Academy, Senn Achievement, Academy and Senn High School.” Rickover doesn’t even have a Local School Council.

• In October, 48th ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith announced a plan for a new $1.5 million “facelift” for the public park behind Senn. The will create a landscaped entrance to the Naval Academy, while simultaneously moving Senn’s parking lot down the street, a block away from the school.

• The Navy has a gym; Senn does not. The Rickover gym, which serves about 100 students, was finished during the summer. Senn’s gym, which serves almost 1,500, will be out of commission for much of the year as it is renovated.

The problems facing Senn will only get worse if these plans are not stopped. The Rickover Naval Academy will quadruple in size over the next three years. If this first year is any indication, Senn High School will continue to be strangled.

What is in store for Senn after it is eclipsed by a military academy? Will Senn finally be pushed into the gutter by a charter school or some strange combination of heavily marketed, time-consuming, and unproven “small schools” plans?

By October, it seemed clear to the majority of Senn staff and community activists that there was a plan to do exactly that.

Despite majority opposition to the destruction of Senn from all constituencies, powerful politicians and the administration of CPS continue to try to force this conversion on Senn.

“Senn Tomorrow” and its fate

In February 2005, an advisory committee formed in secret by Arne Duncan and Alderman Smith sought to create a timeline for ‘Requests For Proposals (RFP’s). That secret committee (originally called the “Task Force” by Duncan and Smith and later renamed the “Senn Tomorrow” committee after it was broadened and democratized following community and staff pressure) was essentially putting Senn High School out to bid. The chairman of the committee (a charter school principal named John Horan) announced at the committee’s first meeting that the committee’s main job was to meet July 2005 deadlines for “RFPs” (requests for proposals). Most people at Senn didn’t know what “RFP” meant at the time, and that plan was blocked by the majority of the people on “Senn Tomorrow” itself. At the same time, the alderman’s supporters (including many who had publicly criticized Senn during the hearings in late 2004) were contacting a charter school (Perspectives, which at best has a mixed record in its present home) to see if they could bring a “campus” of Perspectives into the Senn neighborhood.

Senn Tomorrow was reorganized after its secrecy was exposed. By April, Senn Tomorrow had voted (by an overwhelming margin of 14 - 2) to ask that the military academy be postponed while a true evaluation of Senn was done. Instead of encouraging the development of the committee which they themselves had begun, in August Duncan and Smith unilaterally disbanded Senn Tomorrow [which now exists as “Friends of Senn”].

Secrecy versus democracy

Senn Tomorrow was not the first attempt by public school officials and local politicians to manipulate consensus behind the scenes.

The first secret plan to radically change Senn was uncovered a little over a year ago, when Senn staff found out about the military academy planning, which was well along by the opening weeks of the 2004-2005 school year.

Despite the appearance of a done deal, Senn quickly mobilized in oppositions to the proposal. Between September 2004 and December 2004, every significant segment of the community spoke in opposition to the installation of the military academy at Senn. Hundreds of students protested. Dozens of parents questioned the plans. The majority opposed the plans of those in power. Every argument to change Senn (from Senn’s academic “failure” to the supposed “underutilization” of the Senn building) was proved to be untrue. [Accounts of these struggles are available on the web at SaveSenn.org and Substanenews.com.]

Large demonstrations and community meetings were held in October, November, and early December 2004. These culminated in downtown demonstrations on the even of the December Board of Education meeting (December 14) and a “field trip” to the school board on December 15.

Despite the widespread and democratic opposition to the plans, on December 15, the school board voted unanimously (and without discussion) to create the naval academy. Within a month, the school board (which couldn’t even repair peeling paint and falling plaster at Senn High School a few months earlier) was spending more than a million dollars to prepare the space for the “naval academy.”

By September 2005, the “Rickover Naval Academy” had a name, had around 100 students. The school board had spent more than $1 million that could have been used to improve Senn, and top officials were aggressively undermining the work of the rest of Senn from inside the building.

It remains to be seen whether community, student, parent, and staff resistance to the plan, which remains substantial, will have a decisive effect on the future of our school. After the December 15 school board vote, many students and parents were demoralized. One of the clearest expressions of dismay came from those who had believed that democracy would matter in the decisions of the Chicago Board of Education. Students were especially saddened by the treatment they had received, with many crying after the vote to impose the naval academy on Senn.

What the future will hold

Either way, the implications of Renaissance 2010 for public educators in Chicago are becoming clear: community high schools are out of favor and will be replaced by military, contract, charter, and official “small” schools inside the very buildings that now house our students.

The logic is summed up by Tom Vander Ark, the executive director for education of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who told a Providence newspaper, “large comprehensive high schools don’t work for many kids, especially minority kids.”

Repeated over and over, this is the kind of assertion which many people in power are likely to believe without a second thought because it dovetails so nicely with a bunch of other things they believe without evidence: that inner city kids don’t perform because their educators have given up on them, that inner city teachers are burned out and lazy, and only the competitive market, backed up with test score-driven accountability can restore order.

What has not been done is to do a real comparison between Chicago’s general high schools and those of Chicago’s nearest suburbs. While large high schools seem to be the norm for the suburban students who attend them, for some reason, large high schools are not acceptable for urban students. But nobody who criticizes the urban high schools has bothered to do a comparison, resource by resource, between the city and the suburbs.

Ironically, the very people who have brought the Rickover Naval Academy to Senn High School could provide the resources to do such a study. There are more than a dozen public and private high schools in Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s Congressional District. Of the three largest (in terms of student size during the 2004-2005 school year, Senn was chosen to get a “military academy”). The other two large high schools in Schakowsky’s district are Evanston Township High School (in Evanston) and Main South High School (in Park Ridge). Activists at Senn High School are now beginning to suggest that a “task force” be established to do a complete study of everything available to the students who attend those three schools and to the people who work in them. After that, it is being suggested, further discussion might be in order as to what solutions should be available to improve urban general high schools.