Chicago Reporter (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/tag/high-schools/)
The district’s record on reusing shuttered schools has residents worried that the neighborhood high school will become another empty building in a community burdened by vacancies.
Two reports from Generation All and a Chicago Public Schools working group are calling for more support for neighborhood high schools and better long-term planning. The district plans to release an updated high school strategy by the end of the school year.
Research out of Chicago finds that fewer students passed online credit recovery courses in algebra compared to students in traditional classes.
The current climate of unbridled school competition has diverted resources and support away from neighborhood schools, putting them on an unequal playing field and exacerbating our city’s social inequality.
“You don’t realize how much you love something until it’s kind of out of our reach,” said Jones junior Darcy Palder at a recent student rally. “And when I started realizing that we might not have those special classes that we love or those teachers who have helped us so much, I realized that we needed to do something.”
The district lost more than than 5,000 students this year, which is more than twice the projected number. Twenty-seven schools with lower-than-expected enrollment will now lose more than a half-million dollars on top of earlier budget cuts.
CPS is in a dispute with the testing company, ACT, over what officials say were compromised EXPLORE and PLAN tests from last year. As a result, the district wants to modify the school rating policy that takes into account those assessments — and make a slight tweak to teacher evaluations.
Over the last two summers, CPS has invested in helping pay for summer transition counselors, who help recent graduates navigate the complex process that often precedes enrolling in college. For some veterans, it’s a return to a strategy used in the early 2000s when resources for post-secondary work were plentiful.
District officials said they’d reopen Dyett High School as an arts-themed neighborhood high school. But activists on an 18-day hunger strike aren’t ready to call it a victory.
Students at the 56 high schools that will start classes later this school year foresee problems with after-school activities and jobs, but a researcher says they may learn more.