Friday, March 8, 2013

Sun-Times: School closings hardest on African-Americans because of population shifts, mayor says

That is if you believe the 2010 Census results. Apparently it's still being brought up even if not directly in this article:
Nine out of 10 Chicago Public School students potentially impacted by school closings are African-American because their neighborhoods suffered population losses, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday.

One day after a community activist branded the disproportionate impact on black students a “lawsuit waiting to happen,” Emanuel renewed his commitment to forge ahead with a politically explosive decision that Chicago has avoided for a decade.

“There has been a big change in the city over the last decade ... and we need to make sure that our schools are reflective of the change in our city,” the mayor said.

“We have postponed this. It’s actually a postponement that’s adversely affected our children’s education. Now, we need to deal with it in a very sensitive way, in a compassionate way, but achieve the goal, like the longer school day, to give all our children a high-quality, valuable education so they can have a future that is worthy of those children.”
...
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that 88 percent of the students attending the 129 schools that remain on the CPS hit list are African-American.

The newspaper also reported that 117 of the 129 schools are majority black and that 119 of them have a percentage of black students higher than the district average.

The racial breakdown of the schools does not mirror overall demographics of the district. Across the city, 41.7 percent of CPS students are African-American, 8.8 percent are white and 44.1 percent are Hispanic. The rest are Asian, Native-American or members of other racial groups.
BTW, this comment was e-mailed to the blog recently. We know that CPS wants to sell their downtown HQ and this was in response to that posting, "Just wondering. Why don't they renovate one of the schools they are about to close?"
I have one potential candidate to do the duties. Crispus Attucks School in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Two pictures were posted of the now closed elementary school over at 3813 South Dearborn Street in Bronzeville over at Progress Illinois.


 Now see, this would bring the school board closer to the neighborhoods that they will affect with their decisions. And at least they will save money because they already own the facility. Also at Crispus Attacks they won't be too far away from Chicago Police HQ. ;)

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