CPS, Emanuel hint new school may not be needed at Dyett site

As a hunger strike over the future of Dyett High School finished its 11th day, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public School officials hinted that a new school might not be needed in the historic school building, saying that 12 other high schools serve a declining population within a 3-mile radius.

Newly installed Chief Academic Officer Janice Jackson also said that the request for proposals process was initiated by former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett before Jackson and CEO Forrest Claypool took charge.

“I think it’s important to be straightforward about the obstacles to opening another high school in this area considering the fact that they have declining enrollment and we have existing high schools there that are under-enrolled,” Jackson said Thursday. “We don’t want to open a new school and then have those schools competing when they’re already in a position where they’re fighting over the same children. So we just have to be responsible with any decisions that we make.”

Jackson cited 12 high schools within a 3-mile radius of Dyett, characterizing several as “severely underutilized” according to a CPS formula. Williams, Bronzeville and Hyde Park high schools are between 25 to 50 percent capacity, according to district-provided numbers.

Of those 12 high schools, one is selective enrollment, which requires testing in; one is a military academy with strict uniform and discipline requirements; one is run by the non-profit Academy for Urban School Leadership; and four are charter schools. That leaves five open-enrollment neighborhood high schools, all but one with room for more students.

In a background briefing, CPS officials would not respond when asked specifically whether they plan to nix the request for proposals process whose recent delay sparked the hunger strike.

The next hearing on the fate of the school is scheduled for Sept. 15. The Board of Education is expected to vote on Sept. 29.

CPS decided in 2012 to close Dyett High School a grade a year, citing low enrollment and poor performance. In June, just 13 seniors graduated. After public pressure, the cash-strapped district accepted proposals to reopen a school in the fall of 2016.

One proposal came from the hunger strikers and other members of the community for the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology Community High School. The arts organization Little Black Pearl proposed a school, too, and Dyett’s last principal applied to open a sports-themed district-run school.

Board of Ed President Frank Clark hinted at the end of Wednesday’s board meeting that the decision “may or may not be the conclusion that everybody wants.”

That was after one of the strikers, 40-year-old Jeanette Taylor, felt faint and had to be taken by paramedics to Northwestern University Hospital, where she remained Thursday.

Also on Thursday morning — a day after two more hunger strikers required medical attention — a physician delivered a letter signed by 16 doctors and nurses to the mayor’s office clarifying the dire health risks the 12 face in their quest to save the Bronzeville neighborhood school. They are subsisting on vitamins and liquids, such as tea and vegetable broth.

“We don’t have days and weeks to fiddle around with this. The mayor should call a meeting with them today,” said Dr. Linda Murray, who retired last year from her role as chief medical officer for the Cook County Department of Public Health. “We’re at a point now where a number of our older and more fragile strikers are reaching a danger zone . . . where irreversible damage may happen.”

She said strikers are experiencing diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, severe dehydration, dizziness and headaches.

Emanuel was not at City Hall — he was cutting a ribbon at the new global headquarters of in-flight connectivity company Gogo in the West Loop. There Emanuel told reporters that Frank Clark met with coalition leaders to try to resolve the Dyett High School controversy.

He too referred to the number of schools in the area.

“How do you talk about another one when even some of the high schools within the 3-mile radius are not at capacity yet?” Emanuel said. “That’s an issue that Frank and Forrest [Claypool, schools CEO] are going to work through.”