Chicago Reporter (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/tag/cps-administration/page/3/)
CPS board members voted Wednesday to move forward with two controversial plans: infusing a military focus and adding high school grades at Ames and building an addition for Lincoln Elementary.
The contract with the SUPES Academy is by far the largest no-bid contract that CPS has entered into in at least five years. And the contract has raised suspicion because CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had a previous relationship with SUPES.
CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett says she is open to “tweaking” the district’s large scale principal professional development and coaching program. But, with increased administration involvement, some are questioning the wisdom of entering into the $20 million three-year contract with the SUPES Academy.
North Lawndale is in a precarious position. In our community, this new structure has separated our neighborhood high schools from the elementary schools. Collins High School is an AUSL school, and so will only be reaching out to AUSL elementary schools. North Lawndale College Prep and other charters will be isolated into another different network. There is no traditional high school in North Lawndale with which the remaining traditional elementary schools can be aligned.
UPDATE: CPS officials now say that Ames will convert to a military school and add high school grades, but that Marine Math and Science Academy will not move into the Ames building, according to WBEZ and the Chicago Tribune. The news comes just days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that Marine Academy would relocate into the Ames building, a move that Ames parents had long suspected and fought against. The relocation would have effectively shuttered Ames just months after the controversial closure of 49 schools.
For over a year, parents at Ames Middle School fought a proposal by 26th Ward Ald. Roberto Maldonado to move Marine Math and Science Academy into the school. They held rallies, showed up at school board meetings, and contacted decision makers – only to be told that CPS had no such plan in the works. Yet on Tuesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced exactly that move.
Without fanfare, CPS board members recently approved a three-year, no-bid $20 million contract to provide extensive professional development for principals and network chiefs in what is being dubbed the Chicago Leadership Academy.
For months, officials have said the district faced a monumental deficit of $1 billion, blaming the state’s pension crisis for the bulk of the problem. But on Wednesday, Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley told board members that some good fortune—in the form of reserve funds—would help make ends meet.
Amid protests over slashed school budgets, CPS announced plans on Wednesday to open new schools for current and potential dropouts.
CPS officials on Tuesday mostly dismissed the conclusions by independent hearing officers that the district should not close 11 schools, without addressing safety concerns and questions about the academics at the receiving schools.
Speaking on background, the officials said that the hearing officers–who concluded that CPS did not comply with state law and therefore should not close the schools–either did not understand or over-stepped their role.
CPS board members approved Wednesday the expansion of several charter networks but, in an unusual occurrence for an appointed board that usually accepts all of the administration’s recommendations, the proposals did not all earn unanimous votes.