CPS proposes closing two schools, consolidating others

Education Reporter

Despite a five-year ban on closing schools, Chicago Public Schools proposes to close two schools it emptied out in recent years citing “zero student enrollment.”

And in a slew of major planned changes that state law required the district to publicize by Tuesday, CPS says it’ll also put a new charter school into an ailing neighborhood high school building at 730 N. Pulaski Road. KIPP Elementary School would be set up at Orr Academy High School, whose enrollment has dwindled.

CPS will follow a community-driven recommendation to consolidate three tiny high schools on the West Side into one that can offer more variety of classes and programs — Austin Polytechnical Academy, Austin Business and Entrepreneurship, and VOISE Academy.

“Really because of student-based budgeting and fact that you had three principals in the building with less than 600 students, it doesn’t make any sense,” said Dwayne Truss, a member of the Austin Community Action Council that supports the merger.

For similar reasons, CPS will combine two schools run by the nonprofit Academy of Urban School Leadership into one — Mary Mapes Dodge Renaissance Elementary Academy and Morton School of Excellence.

And it will move the highschool grades of John Spry Community School into a building that already houses Maria Saucedo Elementary Scholastic Academy and Telpochcalli Elementary School at 2850 W. 24th Blvd.

Telpochcalli counselor Erin Franzinger Barrett said her school was blindsided by the news Tuesday, though she grew suspicious last summer when CPS closed the building her small school has shared for decades with Saucedo and did major renovations.

She characterized the plan to house teens in space with two pre-K through eighthgrade schools a “hot mess.”

“Telpochcalli is intentionally a small school so we have less than 300 kids and we try to have small class sizes. We end up technically under the efficiency model. Can we cram more kids in? Yes. Is that what we do? No,” she said, “Because it’s not good for kids.”

The small dual-language school occupies a two-story wing of the structure at 2850 W. 24th Blvd., and Saucedo has a three-story space.

CPS also will close for good two schools that have existed only on paper after CPS steered students elsewhere — Moses Montefiore Special Elementary School, formerly at 1310 S. Ashland, and Marine Military Math and Science Academy, once at 145 S. Campbell.

Montefiore students were spread out at other schools, and Marine’s students were urged to go to a new expanded campus about four miles away at 1920 N. Hamlin called The Marine Academy at Ames.

CPS continued to insist Tuesday the proposal doesn’t violate the moratorium.

“No students or teachers are affected by either of the actions at Montefiore or Marine, which is what the moratorium was designed to address,” spokeswoman Emily Bittner said. “The moratorium was meant to ease the public’s concerns about year over year disruptions to students, while these actions clarify the status of schools that had no students.”

Under state law, CPS cannot close schools without announcing its intentions and then holding public hearings before asking the Board of Education for approval.