The board saved only four schools from its initial proposal, which the board has stated will save $560 million over the next decade for the district that is currently facing a $1 billion deficit.

“Today’s reality requires change,” said David Vitale, president of the Chicago Board of Education, in an address at the scheduled board meeting. “It is undeniable we have excess capacity in our system; it is also undeniable that we operate with constrained resources.”

The decision calls for 49 elementary schools and one high school to be closed in an attempt to consolidate underutilized schools and provide a better educational experience for the approximately 27,000 students who will be affected. Backed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, as well as Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara
Byrd-Bennett, the move is promised to provide all students in Chicago with a 21st century education.

However, the plan has developed fierce opposition from parents, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the community. Some protesters present at the decision-making meeting had to be physically removed from the building as tensions began to boil.

“We have a situation that has been created by bad policy that is now being exacerbated by bad policy,” said Karen Lewis, CTU president. “Closing 50 schools should not even be thought of as OK. It doesn’t save money; it doesn’t help children.”

Lewis said there has been extensive research demonstrating that students who move schools, particularly if that student’s school is closed down, lose anywhere from three months of learning to one year.

“They call themselves data-driven, but they ignore data when it doesn’t suit their agenda,” she said.

The mayoral-appointed board has been enormously misguided, Lewis said, and though she believes the board genuinely has the best interest of children at heart, their agenda is simply too skewed.

“I think it is very clear: mayoral control is an absolute failed experiment and nightmare,” she said. “It might even work with reasonable people, but it certainly doesn’t work with people who have an unbelievably bad agenda.”

Lewis used Detroit, St. Louis and Kansas City as examples of cities that have had little success after a wave of school closures.

The board has said the funds from the closures will be used for much-needed amenities such as air conditioning in every classroom, a library in every school, iPads for all students in grades 3-8, new and updated technology, improved American Disability Act (ADA) accessibility, upgraded facilities, improved food services and customized school safety plans.

Ten new STEM programs, six international baccalaureate programs and a new fine arts program will also be included.

Byrd-Bennett issued a video statement in defense of the proposal.
“We can’t continue to tell our parents that we’re providing a quality education for our children and we know we are not,” Byrd-Bennett said. “This is the first step to ensuring a guarantee for every child in Chicago Public Schools.”

Chicago Alderman Robert Foretti spoke against the closures, worrying that past hearings on the issue might have been a “charade.” The massive school shuttering will lead to higher dropout rates and increased street violence, he said.

“You’ve said you will save a lot of money by closing these schools; however, there is no proof that you will save any money due to the burgeoning costs of what these school closures will make,” Fioretti said.

But board officials have said the time is now to make decisions that will benefit the students of Chicago.
“We have to fix our schools, and in order to do that, we cannot continue to operate when we have too many schools for the number of students we have,” said Andrea Zopp, Chicago Public Schools board member. “We have to act. We cannot wait another year.”

Parents who say the closures disproportionately affect black students and special education students have filed two class-action lawsuits to halt the closures. Supported by the CTU, a four-day hearing in July was granted by Judge John Lee.

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This is the school district’s first major step in dealing with the financial crises that came to a tipping point last January when district officials realized they would run out of cash by summer 2012. At that time, they brought in a chief recovery officer to focus on helping the district make it through the fiscal year and asked Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to “come in with the same very crucial and specific goals — to get us out of that financial hole, to be able to survive it and be able to move forward to the next,” said Fernando Gallard, chief of communications for the district. “That’s most of the work BCG did, and it was very successful at that. We were able to come out of that fiscal cliff. The district is now in operation, has a five-year financial plan and is moving forward.”

One of the top recommendations from BCG: to get the district’s utilization rate to 85 percent. The District took this as verification that they needed to develop a list and figure out the best way of closing schools to increase the utilization rate in the district. “In some cases, we are maintaining half to less than half occupancy in our buildings and wasting dollars on empty space,” Gallard said. “We are calculating that we have approximately 53,000 empty seats in open buildings, and we want to start consolidating the students so we can have a better use of our resources, which means we can provide better resources to our students.”

The Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), a group that includes the city’s teacher’s union, opposes the plan to shut down schools and even published an alternative in December to some of the recommendations revealed in the BCG report released in spring 2012. Their plan asks for more per-pupil funding; expansions of staffs, programs and support services; and a halt to school closures and charter expansion.

These requests, however, are not a part of the district’s initial Action Plan 1.0. The plan has two main goals: to improve academic outcomes and ensure the district’s financial viability.
One thing that both sides do agree on is that more state funding is necessary after Governor Tom Corbett cut the District’s budget by $200 million. This year, the district borrowed $300 million, and officials predict a deficit of $1 billion by the 2017-2018 school year unless critical steps are taken now.

Closing 37 schools is just the first step. “The district is still in a very fragile financial situation. We must make some very substantial changes to the way we run the district to stay afloat, have enough cash to finish the year and find ways to improve the education of the students, which is our main focus,” Gallard said. “Our concern is that people will think that, once we close the schools, we’re fine, but there’s more to be done. We’ll be talking to our labor partners soon and having very difficult conversations regarding what needs to be done to move forward and survive as a district financially.”

So, what does this mean for the construction industry? “It means that there are some lean years ahead, but once we come out of this, we will continue to invest in our schools. However, it’s going to take two to three very difficult years,” Gallard said.
The school buildings listed for closure include 22 elementary schools, four middle schools and 11 high schools. The school locations are in almost every part of the city, especially North Central, West and Northwest Philadelphia, and include ones with long histories in the community such as Strawberry Mansion, Germantown and University City high schools.

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