In announcing plans to build another selective-enrollment high school on the North Side, Mayor Rahm Emanuel might as well have laughed in his critics’ faces.
That’s how wrong the timing is for such an endeavor.
Concerned African-American families on the South and West sides are still so outraged over the mayor’s decision to shutter 50 public schools last year, that an “Anybody but Rahm” political campaign has formed to challenge Emanuel’s re-election bid.
And despite emotional pleas from community stakeholders outside of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the mayor’s handpicked school board moved forward with plans on Wednesday to turn three more public schools over to a private contractor.
Now, Emanuel’s decision to open a selective-enrollment school named for President Barack Obama in an upscale community where roughly 70 percent of the seats will be filled through an admissions process adds insult to injury.
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