#FacilitiesMatter

If you know my work in education organizing in Chicago, a lot of what Blocks Together has focused on in the last five years is the complicated but necessary changes needed in how Chicago Public School makes facility decisions that have negatively impacted education and communities, such as school openings, closures, and attendance boundaries to name a few.

BT's work has also addressed the critical capital needs in our local schools, helping to win millions in building repairs. Buildings that are safe, clean, and comfortable,  as well as accommodating space for class size, enrichment programming, and programming for students with diverse learning needs, are all important to student success, but at times are not available to many Chicago Public Schools students.

Much of the building condition issues can be blamed on budget cuts, or the misalignment of priorities, but more overarching is the lack of educational planning, or the lack of creating and implementing a facilities plan to stabilize facilities in the system with an educational vision to provide quality educational programming in all buildings. This same facilities long term thinking also creates a plan around school actions such as closures, openings, annexes, and overcrowding relief.

Recent educational controversies show how the district has not implemented an educational vision that has supported financial and educational ingenuity. The debate around the growth of Charter schools is a major one of these controversies. In the last few years I have witnessed critical building needs in local neighborhood schools be unaddressed while renovations at other types of schools proceed despite a dwindling capital budget in the district.

Matter of fact, I have written that after the mass school closures of 2013 a number of Charters were approved including their capital and lease costs, despite the months prior where there was the message of "budget constraints and right sizing the district".

Currently there is the Southwest Side of the City struggling to understand new charter proposals under the financial strain of the district and neighborhood high schools in need of capital and other resources go unmet.

A more prevalent example was the Hunger strike of the Dyett High School community members whose story is one of Charter school proliferation, while an advancing neighborhood high school lost enrollment and resources.

Many of the past facility decisions lacked the critical analysis that the district should have been thinking through:

-          What are the current facility needs of our schools?

-          What curriculum needs be addressed that our buildings need to accommodate?

-          Is the average class size in a community being considered, including the space needed for our young people with learning disabilities/diverse learners?

-          And are we utilizing any underutilized space to support wrap around services for students and their communities?

In 2013 the hope was that many of these thoughts would be the framework for the mandated 10 Year Master Facility Plan, but it was not entirely considered. While the plan has addressed some of the needed transparency and updated facility assessments for each CPS school, the plan has not addressed things like embedding community needs in the educational planning of communities to avoid the disruption of some closures and school openings that take away from current community school capacity. The current plan has not been explicit about including any Charter school expansion, and it has not analyzed community growth and needs through more rich data that is available. This information can tell the story of vacant schools potential re-purposing, and plans to address capital needs in the district for a more wholistic educational vision, mean while avoid unnecessary facility decisions during such "financially stressful times".

This fall and winter there is an opportunity for changes to be made to the current 10 Year Master Facility Plan, and the Chicago Educational Facilities Task force yet again will be collecting data and hearing from stakeholders around individual issues around facilities and overarching changes to how school planning should be initiated in this city. What should be the districts priorities, how can your school community be engaged in addressing it's capital needs, and what does the district need to know about your community's education needs?

Despite the avenue of the task force provides through its community meetings, community stakeholders should share directly with the district needed changes on how CPS plans for school buildings.

Additionally this Thursday, September 24th the City of Chicago City Council meeting will be considering a resolution being introduced by Ald. Sawyer of the 6th Ward to establish a moratorium on charter school expansion for the 2015-2016 school year, until a comprehensive study of long term facility and school programming needs is completed with significant public input, and CPS’ financial balance sheet demonstrates long term stability. This resolution is to go before the big October board meeting where a number of Charter School proposals are to be voted on to operate next school year.

Please review the following fact sheets to learn more about how to be involved in the issues around facilities and reform and stay tune to Blocks Together's work around Facility Reform on our website or email the taskforce at ceftf.ilga@gmail.com to get more information about upcoming meetings.

Facilities Fact Sheet
 QandA_What is the EFMP

Charter School Moratorium Fact Sheet
RYH-CPS.CharterExVote2015-v.F

Another teacher strike?

In fall of 2012 the highly anticipated (based on who you ask) Chicago Teachers Strike ensued. I was a parent that was impacted as a mother of a first grader, matter of fact my kids and I went to the picket lines with my daughter's teachers. My connection to the strike was more than being impacted as a Chicago Public Schools parent, but as an organizer that has worked on education issues and working in solidarity with Chicago Teachers Union leadership for years. We have worked together around the pressing issues that have been impacting Chicago Public Schools, and the issues that impact my own community where public education institutions are critical to community development.  With this, the contract negotiations were always more than just about the longer school day debate and fair pay (please don't hate that teachers are making living wages and most of us don't have a union to support us to receive a fair living wage), but was about the larger issues facing Chicago Public Schools students and parents, their contract included classroom improvement demands like:

• Smaller class sizes.

• More playgrounds, recess time and physical education classes.

• More art, dance, theater, music and foreign language instruction.

• More funding for libraries.

• Healthier school lunches.

• An end to the "apartheid-like" Chicago Public School system today and to "discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color."

• Guarantee pre-K and full-day kindergarten for all students.

• Higher teacher salaries and more teacher "autonomy."

• Better bilingual and special needs programs.

• Higher-quality school facilities.

Unfortunately contract negotiations did not win many of these classroom changes, so as we move forward into new contract negotiations it is still critical that the new demands, which revisit many of the 2012  classroom demands, are again on the table and pushed through. Despite that budget issues are even more pervasive. We do know (see previous blog) that the finances of the district are not always what they seem, and while the district has made cuts that have been impacted certain communities in the name of austerity, the district has moved forward with problematic spending, even recent scandals have shown this to be true. It has been proven that financial dooms day has been used as a distraction, so I press on in the name of winning classroom changes for my community, my children, and schools across the city. Optimal learning conditions or teacher working conditions are important and are necessary for closing the achievement gaps and anchoring positive spaces of learning throughout our city such as;  restorative justice coordinators in each school, decrease nurse ratio per student, smaller class size through fees for large class size.

But the question is how do we create the environment for these important issues to be negotiated and be exempt from the question of "who's going to pay". What the contract negotiations begin to start is a dialogue around not only the potential of a teachers strike,  the budget crisis, continued privatization, and the mass closures of 2013, but a dialogue that should be happening around public schools and the financial reforms that must take place in order to fulfill many of these classroom demands that CTU is negotiating around such as: 

Establish lower and compulsory class size limits in all schools.

Ensure that every school has: the necessary clinicians and a school counselor and nurse; a truant officer, restorative justice coordinator, librarian and playground instructors; and art, music, physical education and other teachers to create robust and effective educational programs.

Restore adequate preparation time and enforce paperwork limits for teachers.

Dedicate resources previously committed to Teach for America to the Grow Your Own Program instead to develop a more diverse and local teaching force directly from CPS student graduates.

Engage in legal action against big banks to retrieve upwards of $1 billion for our classrooms; end contracts with these same financial institutions that refuse to renegotiate excessive fees and penalties.

Return diverted revenues from the tax increment financing (TIF) program to the schools.

Expanded pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) for parents at 300% of the Federal Poverty Level.

Establish 50 sustainable community schools and strive for policies to achieve increasing integration of students and increased access to curriculum which reflects the experiences and identities of our students.

The upcoming publicity aka "the spin" will be focused on the challenging financial conditions of the district, despite the oversimplification around "lack of funds" and "greedy teachers",  it is important we maintain these critical pieces of classroom and school improvements and the ways to fund them be pushed forward in the new contract negotiations. The CTU has brought forward a number of new revenue mechanisms that are PAINLESS, and worth making investments in Chicago's children education.

This is what is important for both sides, improving the learning conditions for our children.

To become involved in learning more about the contract negotiations, and learn how to advocate for these changes there are forums happening across the city. Blocks Together will sponsor a forum on Wednesday, June, 10, 2015 from 6-8pm at the Kelly Hall YMCA, 824 N. Hamlin. Representatives from the CTU bargaining team will be there, CPS has declined coming to the event to discuss the negotiations.