Chicago Public Schools, closings, and spending to be examined

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois – Co-Chairs, Illinois State Senator William Delgado (D-Chicago), and Representative Cynthia Soto announced today the first meeting of the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force (CEFTF) will be held MONDAY, MARCH 8^th, 2010, from 9 AM – Noon at the James R. Thompson Center (Chicago, IL).

Chicago School Facilities Act charged the task force with examining the capital spending and school re-organization decisions of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), in the wake of public concerns about fairness, equity, and transparency. 

“Our goal is to make sure that taxpayers’ dollars are being used wisely, to advance our children’s education” - Senator Delgado Over the past decade, CPS has spent billions of tax dollars on school facilities, while severe overcrowding and substandard conditions in many schools were overlooked.  In the past 4 years, CPS has taken an aggressive approach to open, close, phase out, or “turn around” dozens of local public schools.  Parents, community groups, educators and legislators have long questioned how CPS arrived at these critical decisions. Recently the Consortium on Chicago School Research (based at the University of Chicago) also questioned the educational benefits of CPS’s actions. Now, with the launching of the CEFTF, the Illinois General Assembly will lead an inquiry into CPS’s actions and choices, the lack of transparency in its decision making, and provide a public input process.

“Our goal is to make sure that taxpayers’ dollars are being used wisely, to advance our children’s education,” Senator Delgado said.  “This Task Force will ensure that the public has its say, while at the same time we will be able to learn from the very best practices of other major school districts.”

Senator Delgado and Representative Soto, the sponsors of the bill, attracted nearly unanimous bipartisan support in both chambers to create the Task Force, a ground-breaking process to assess the impacts of CPS’s often contentious and costly decisions on students, educators, schools, and communities; and to craft legislative remedies and policy reform recommendations.

The Act states that all children in Illinois need access to quality educational facilities, which are “essential” to positive education outcomes; and states that “these decisions should be implemented according to clear system-wide criteria and with the significant involvement of local school councils, parents, educators, and the community”. Unlike other public school districts in Illinois, CPS is not now required to have a Facilities Master Plan. 

“We can’t leave so many students and schools behind,” said Rep. Soto.  “We’re going to take a hard look at how kids and communities are impacted when CPS closes schools, or when only some children are in ‘state of the art’ classrooms and others aren’t.  We have to solve the inequities in the system.”