Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Three Englewood high schools to be phased out instead of closed at end of school year



[VIDEO] I would say this is good news for those concerned parents who send their children to the four Englewood high schools that are slated to close at the end of the school year. Why close those four schools and then send them to schools outside of the neighborhood to say Hyde Park or Bogan for example.



Via Chicago Tribune:
Harper, Hope and TEAM Englewood high schools will remain open until current freshmen graduate under a revamped proposal announced Monday by CPS CEO Janice Jackson.

Robeson High School still would close this summer, pending a final vote from the Chicago Board of Education. Its building still would be demolished and replaced with an $85 million campus that’s expected to open to a freshman-only class next year.

The district’s partial reversal follows a number of heated public hearings on the proposed closings, where residents and community activists criticized the initial plan to close all four schools at the end of this academic term.

Students attending the three schools can remain as they wind down operations, or leave for surrounding schools, Jackson said.

“We did hear from students who felt just as strongly and just as passionately about the fact that they wanted another opportunity, as some of those folks who spoke out against this (school closing plan),” Jackson told the Tribune. “That’s why we’re trying to compromise here, and give people an opportunity to stay, who want to stay — but also give people an opportunity to leave, who want to leave.”

Harper, Hope and Robeson rank among Chicago’s most underenrolled, underperforming and cash-strapped neighborhood high schools. School leaders at Harper and Hope will face an immense challenge to offer students a basic level of education as successive classes of students leave those buildings.

“The only way that I’ve been able to analyze the situation is in the view of a cancer patient,” Asiaha Butler, president of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood and a member of a community steering committee CPS created to address Englewood’s high schools, said last week when asked about the prospect of the schools being closed in stages. “We’re going to have to triage this. That’s a scary thought, but these buildings and these schools and these institutions have been dying. That’s the reality of it. Something will really have to happen in an innovative way so they don’t continue to die if they’re phased out.”

Robeson located at 6835 S. Normal has often been noted in the news as a struggling school. And suffered a very drastic enrollment decline during the last decade. Remember another article about declining enrollment at city high schools from November. From almost 1300 students to only 128


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