By Jackson Potter

Even with the recent federal court ruling lambasting the decision by school board officials in Dover, Pennsylvania to permit the teaching of intelligent design, the Chicago Public Schools decided to treat the holiday season as a time to be holy.

A year ago, on February 10, 2006, dozens of community activists testified against Board of Education plans to phase out Englewood High School. Above, community organizer Hal Baskin, protests the attacks on Englewood. Despite widespread opposition to the plans, the Duncan administration appointed a “Transition Advisory Council” consisting mostly of business executives and politicians with no ties to the school and voted to turn the school over to a Catholic charter school operator. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

  
In an act of extraordinary kindness, school CEO Arne Duncan granted new life to the Catholic School System, giving a number of Catholic school based charter proposals the green light. One of the schools, scheduled to replace Englewood High School located at 6201 S. Stewart, is “Urban Prep,” a charter school run by former Hales Franciscan principal, Timothy King. Instead of having to raise money to meet his $1 million dollar annual operating costs at Hales, King has effectively maneuvered to get CPS to pay his bills.

The school board voted to close Englewood came almost a year before the vote to give Englewood to Timothy King and his colleagues. As a teacher at Englewood, I have personally witnessed how the closure decision has negatively affected us. We have lost 20 staff members and substantial discretionary funds in less than a one-year period.

The decision to replace an institution that is over 100 years old and serves a community dependent on its services with an untested charter program, strikes many impacted by the decision as flawed. While some defend Mr. King, pointing out his roots in the community — both of his grandfathers and his mother attended Englewood High School — others, who were key players in the process, are yelling foul.

One such critic, Etta Davis, is a lifelong community resident and member of the Transitional Advisory Council (TAC). The TAC is the “team” created by the Board to represent the community in the Renaissance 2010 transitions. Ms. Davis criticized the Board’s tendency to switch gears in midstream. She speaks with authority about the numerous attempts by CPS to “solve” school underachievement problems, all of which suffer from a history of failure. In the mid 80s and 90s Englewood experienced a variety of programs and schemes to improve performance, from the efficacy and “children first” plans to the “essential schools” program. By 1997, Englewood underwent “reconstitution.” Each time, these magic bullet solutions proposed by downtown failed to deliver. Should we expect different results now that those in charge are turning to the private sector? Indicators and history tell us we shouldn’t. In fact, the situation portends to have even more disastrous consequences for at risk youth in the system. Let’s take a closer look before passing judgment.

An anonymous source on the TAC says that Urban Prep will probably change the school’s student body — even though they claim they are not going to be a “selective enrollment” school. According to the source, “They can determine who will attend their school, unlike Englewood presently. They say they will include students from the neighborhood but students throughout the city can attend. This is a process of elimination, when you can choose which students can attend your school.”

In his defense Urban Prep’s future principal, Timothy King, says that “by law we have to admit students from the whole district, all of Chicago, but our priority is in the Englewood area and surrounding area. We are recruiting in the immediate area of Englewood and within a five-mile radius of the school.”

Joanna Brown-el — a parent of an Englewood student, member of the Local School Council and of the TAC — disagrees. “I was the dissenting vote on the TAC, I don’t think Tim King’s institution is appropriate,” she said. “They are not really doing active recruitment. I haven’t heard from people who have been contacted by Urban Prep. We have a preppy school with Catholic origins and needs in the community that can’t be met – but if they get students from outside they won’t need to worry about not meeting standards.”

On November 16, 2005, the Chicago Board of Education approved the creation of 15 new charter schools, including “Urban Prep.” The carefully orchestrated media events leading to the Board’s unanimous vote in favor of expanding privatization under Mayor Daley’s “Renaissance 2010” program included dozens of speakers lining up to present their plans in what amounted to free marketing time. Prior to the Board meeting, CEO Arne Duncan had hosted a press event touting what he called the exciting choices coming with the charterization of public education in Chicago. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt 

Hal Baskin, longtime community organizer and former aldermanic candidate, questions the rationale for bringing an all-boys Catholic school program into the public schools. “The Catholic industry has problems with the pedophile issue with their priests”, Baskin said. Speaking to the problem of male socialization he added, “I don’t think an all-male program works. Even the U.S. military is coed.”

According to DePaul University Associate Professor of Education, Pauline Lipman, TACs were never intended to represent community interests: “The TACs are appointed bodies, unlike LSCs (local school councils) which are elected by community residents and are thus directly responsible to the community.” Some members of the TAC, like Ms. Brown-el, agree with Lipman. ”TACs do not have to be comprised of community residents.”

In 1988, the Harold Washington administration passed the School Reform Law that created Local School Councils to open the door for community involvement and democratic governance of the schools. Prior to the election of local school councils, Chicago public schools had “asvisory” councils that no one had to listen to. With the passage of the 1988 law, LSCs had real power. Although the LSCs were being undermined by the Daley administration for some time, according to numerous critics, it was only when Arne Duncan began the privatization of dozens of schools under “Renaissance 2010” that the TACs came into existence and the Duncan administration began ignoring LSCs.

According to Lipman; “The implementation of TACs seriously undermines the 1988 School Reform Law and democratic governance.” The story that Etta Davis tells about her experience on the TAC eerily corroborates Lipman’s depiction of the board’s strategy.

“People are chosen by an application process,” Davis said. “They did not advertise it well, if at all. I found out the day before I applied. I noticed that at [Ralph] Bunche [Elementary School] it was all business people and professionals who were applying to the TAC, no community or parents. They had hand picked members of the TAC.”

Despite these restraints on community representation, the Englewood High School TAC did have a core of dedicated community members and agreed in the beginning that they did not want to accept any charter school proposals. This like many other community concerns was pushed aside by Board prerogatives. TACs are just advisory bodies, which seems to buttress Professor Lipman’s contention that, “they are a means for the Board of Education to advance its agenda without serious community input but nevertheless give the impression of community involvement.”

Regardless of these restrictions, many community members felt that their views about their neighborhood schools should be given strong consideration. Ms Davis explains: “We agreed the process was flawed. Our input should’ve not been taken just as an advisory [contribution]. Many TAC members are upset because we thought we had more of a voice. The Board representatives kept emphatically saying that we were only advisory. We wrote down that we want a community school. Anything that excludes any of our children I’m not for.” So far according to Ms. Brown-el, Urban Prep isn’t adhering to its commitment to the community; “We have asked to be part of the board [of Urban Prep] and received nonchalant answers.”

There is also the lingering question of teacher quality. The Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) has waged a campaign against Renaissance 2010 for its anti union components. According to state law teachers at Illinois charter schools are not allowed to be represented by the CTU, and therefore start off as non-union. Many union members worry that charters are a strategy by the Board and the city to rid itself of pesky worker contracts.

In addition to the question of unionization, community members are concerned about the qualifications of teachers. Mr. King acknowledges that only 50 percent of his staff has to be certified, and says he would discourage union organizing. If his staff decided to organize, he would ask whether there was “something that the school was doing wrong.” He also fears that his staff would be “distracted by the whole process of organizing,” though he says he would support a majority decision to unionize. Most charters are structured in such a way that substantially increases the workload of the teaching staff, while simultaneously diminishing their compensation. At Urban Prep, for instance, teachers will work from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., and since students will be required to do extra curricular activities after school, teachers will be expected to work overtime. While King has given a verbal commitment to enact a pay scale competitive with CPS, he acknowledges; “Realistically we won’t be able to do that in every instance.”

Ms. Brown-el points out that there are some other community concerns about the new school’s relationship with teachers. “The fiscal practices of Tim King at Hales Franciscan during which teachers lost their health coverage were questionable. He was very extravagant and hired far more secretaries than were needed and bought fancy cars. This man doesn’t have a fiscal track record we can trust.”

When pressed Ms. Brown-el admitted that she could not prove her charges but maintained that there were far too many questions that the board has left unanswered. We would all do better to follow her advice to speak out and “challenge people to prove me wrong.” At least her voice combined with those of Ms. Davis, Hal Baskin and others like them in the community, sends a strong message to the Board that it must change its approach. For Hal Baskin there is no substitute for a strong institutional commitment to our children, “I think they are desperate to have some success stories, the reality is they have to spend money. Every student doesn’t have a book, we need security, competent qualified teachers with classroom management skills who understand the social issues that student have coming from Woodlawn, Englewood and other places.” At a minimum, teachers and community representatives seem to agree, that charters won’t do an effective job replacing schools like Englewood, and they do not offer the considerate and thought through solutions we desperately need.