193 ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS NOT SAFE
CPS officials won’t touch high schools, though, in closing threat
It’s not quite “The List” of schools slated for closing or consolidation by June.
But for the first time this year, Chicago Public Schools officials definitively ruled out some of the schools that will be spared from closing or consolidation.
The rest at this point number nearly 200 based on three recommendations that CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett approved Friday from her handpicked panel, according to a Chicago SunTimes analysis.
High schools are safe, so are the highest-performing — or Level 1 — elementary schools, and a few schools that are still growing grade by grade into their buildings, Byrd-Bennett said Friday.
That leaves 193 elementary schools that have not yet been spared and could be subject to drastic action, the Sun-Times has found.
The district won’t release its own preliminary list of schools that could need defending to survive drastic school actions until Feb. 13 after Byrd-Bennett figures out how to deal with three other panel recommendations. But the Sun-Times found there are 10 schools that the panel advised against closing because they have more than 600 students. They also want open 20 schools that underwent a “significant school action” in the last two years and 14 schools open that are close to being “efficient.” Thirteen more schools are both over 600 in enrollment and close to “efficient.”
Byrd-Bennett acknowledged Friday that not everyone will agree with her decisions, though she emphasized that she hasn’t made them on her own.
“I want to state very, very publicly that the work around addressing severe utilization around our schools is going to be very difficult,” she said of the system she inherited. “This is not just about closing schools for