Participatory Planning with Chicago Public Schools Closed Buildings

The Mayor's Advisory Committee on School Re-Purposing came forward with their recommendations a few weeks ago detailing a process for school disposition. The recommendations included an aggressive timetable and a call for community engagement, primarily post bids. The recommendations spoke to moving forward as fast as possible to find alternative uses for the empty buildings, and could limit the ability of communities to organize and create their own process.  

The communities impacted by last years mass school closures need to be able to create their own vision for the vacant spaces as oppose to bids being created by others who are developing a plan for the space based on their market needs. Alderman should take the opportunity or push back on the process and create spaces for community visioning around the re-purposing of these schools, even connecting with more traditional development as well. 


Communities should be able to ask themselves...where do we want to be in this community in the next ten years, how does that look and feel...and what are the institutions and services needed to get there-and can we use the vacant schools to support this vision?

This can build on current plans and initiatives and can introduce new ones, and promote conversation around gaps in services or social capital support that can be addressed in those buildings or by a community controlled bid process. Understanding the parameters of the closed buildings already acts as a filtering process so no need to think the process will get too overwhelming, the maintenance and operation of these buildings cost money and this makes communities and local stakeholders think critically about how the proposals address a communities growth and keep the lights on! 

Community/Collective visioning can include surveys, interviews, and focus groups using the great university and community based organizations throughout the City like the work being done by Resident Association for Greater Englewood and there collaboration with Illinois Institute of Technology. Yes, this will take time but a collaboration like this creates ownership, transparency, increased democracy, and is smart planning. In 2009 the Taskforce did just this to help us create our recommendations that became law in 2011. We devoted a year to vision what CPS needed to be doing when it came to school buildings and worked with teacher, students, parent, principals, and elected officials. From here we created draft changes for the district that were spearheaded by the common recommendations, from this data collection here we translated those themes into Citywide recommendations. We went further and then redistributed it for final review all over the city gaining consensus and working to address people's concerns creating a grassroots informed bill. It was clear that the community recommendations were heavily weighted in our work and without approval from the larger community we were not going to move forward. 


Community engagement should not be post bid where people are giving feedback on whether or not a proposal should go through. Communities can create proposals and create criteria for bids. The participatory budget model that is being used here in Chicago and used in New York City, and throughout the entire City of Vallejo, California also shows some ways we can implement a community engagement process. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. It offers residents a fundamentally different way to engage with government. The process has been used in disenfranchised communities to support stronger democracy, citizen engagement, and encourages leadership in the local community. The engagement for the process includes activities such as neighborhood assemblies, this is where you and other community members propose project ideas and priorities. From there committees research and price out the project and potential impact and finally there is a community vote on the projects that will be considered and sent to the elected officials.  Imagine residents engaging in their own committees to propose plans to the larger community for the closed schools....

These efforts such as community/collective visioning, large scale engagement, requires technical assistance and any resident and stakeholder driven process takes technical support. As CPS takes over the work, as being advised by the Mayor's committees recommendations, CPS should be reaching out, or communities can begin to get support for an initiative like leaning on local universities, funders, and other organizations that support in research, mapping, analysis, data collection, leadership development for residents, and other skills needed for a community engagement process. 

Yes it should be messy,yes it should be time consuming, maybe even cost some money, and yes this should be be done right and not expediently.  The district has many more buildings and much land that has yet to be disposed of prior to the closures of last year. So there is much work to do around getting closed and vacant land off the books besides those recently closed. 

Last years closures were devastating and for many children throughout the City they have had to change their lives because of the school actions. So yes we should respect those that have been changed, and those who have lost, and ensure the sacred spaces are turned into something that is beautiful and can leverage human and community development.