Merging 3 North Lawndale schools still ‘viable’ despite protests by families, CPS CE0 says

Chicago Public Schools chief Janice Jackson still hopes to proceed with a proposal to close three neighborhood schools in North Lawndale and open a single replacement, an idea temporarily shelved this week after months of community opposition but which Jackson calls a “viable plan ... that deserves consideration.”

The proposal, submitted by two community groups last month, was withdrawn ahead of a Tuesday deadline because of strong protests from other neighborhood and parent organizations who said the potential closures would destabilize their community and their input wasn’t being heard. The groups promised better engagement with their neighbors moving forward.

Jackson told the Chicago Sun-Times after that delay that she believes the plan might have advanced to a discussion and potential vote by the Board of Education this year if not for delays to in-person community engagement caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“The district is going to provide more support to help people better understand the plan,” Jackson said. “But again, we haven’t closed the door on this. We think that it is a viable plan and a plan that deserves consideration. But we also don’t want to make a decision that impacts people without them being a part of that process.”

Though Jackson described that community engagement as a way to educate families about the proposal, opponents of the closures have said they fully understand the plan, have seen similar ones implemented in other communities and don’t want it to happen in theirs.

The idea is to consolidate severely under-enrolled schools into one new building to cut overhead costs of running the various schools. The city would remodel the Sumner Elementary building for the new school, then close Sumner, Lawndale Community Academy and Crown Community Academy of Fine Arts.

But the real-life impact, many families have said, is that students suddenly lose their school communities and learning environments they grew to love. Schools with different curricula and cultures can’t seamlessly merge, so the solution is to give these underfunded schools the resources they need, parents and students have argued.

“I’ve made it clear that the enrollment issue that we face in CPS is the biggest issue we face as an organization. We have to address this issue,” Jackson said, countering “there’s no recruitment plan that solves this problem.”

Jackson oversaw the controversial closure of four high schools in Englewood that paved the way for the new neighborhood Englewood STEM High School last fall. She said at the time and reiterated this week she thinks the “model that we’ve seen in Englewood, the model that has been attempted in North Lawndale, is the right approach.”

“We have more schools and more seats than we do students, and we have to come together and create a comprehensive plan for the city,” Jackson said. “But my approach right now is going community by community. It started in Englewood, a place where the enrollment was woefully low. We brought a new school there, and it’s been popular and highly sought after by residents in the community. I think we’ll be able to do the same thing in North Lawndale and communities across the city.”