Chicago Reporter (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/author/maureen-kelleher/page/2/)
Since CEO Arne Duncan took the helm, private and government grants have skyrocketed from $2 million to $29 million. Funders say that steady leadership and a focus on crafting long-term improvements is what’s paying off for the district.
Corporate-school partnerships are being driven to the forefront of donor cultivation strategy at the Renaissance Schools Fund, which aims to raise $50 million for startup grants. Two years into the initiative, Renaissance Schools Fund has passed the halfway mark. It is making headway by focusing most of its resources on matchmaking new school operators directly with donors, and taking a backseat once those relationships are made.
Fundraising for public schools in New York City has reached unprecedented heights over the past three years. But Chicago has nothing to be ashamed of, district officials say.
Attendance boundaries for four Little Village high schools will remain as currently drawn despite a recently passed referendum that calls for changing them, say officials of Chicago Public Schools.
A recent School Board decision to green light a new charter school operated by United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) has inflamed existing tensions in the Pilsen community. Activists say more pressing needs are preschool and alternative high school.
An unnamed student group is the latest sign of efforts to turn around troubled Hyde Park High, where parents, teachers and even students say problems with discipline have been aggravated by the arrival of displaced students. Since 2004, Hyde Park has taken in hundreds of students who would have attended Calumet or Englewood high schools.
At the Bessie Coleman Library in Woodlawn one Saturday morning in February, more than 50 parents and children showed up to hear about the University of Chicago’s new charter school and pick up applications. The school, which has not yet been named, will serve 160 students in grades 6 through 12 in its first year, and will be housed in Wadsworth Elementary. Woodlawn students now have only one neighborhood high school option, Hyde Park.
In 1994, residents of Woodlawn Avenue between 61st and 62nd streets came together to develop an affordable housing cooperative in the area. But it wasn’t long before they made the connection between housing and schools. This fall, the Woodlawn Community School, one of the system’s first small schools, will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Despite recent ups and downs in reading scores, the school has become one of the two strongest-performing schools in the neighborhood.
Back in the 1960s, the University of Chicago was Public Enemy No. 1 in Woodlawn, the feisty neighborhood just south of campus. These days, relations between the university and the community have thawed, although some residents are still deeply suspicious of the school. Meanwhile, university students and tenants have come together to fight displacement of lower-income residents.
RENAISSANCE WATCH Mayor Richard M. Daley’s signature effort to transform failing neighborhood schools advances with a second round of 13 new schools approved for opening later this year. Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter, approved last year, will also open this fall. Three additional schools were approved to start in 2007.