Two CPS schools visited by gov offended by ‘prisons’ comparison

Gage Park High School’s principal thought the visit from the governor went really well.

During an hours-long visit to Gage Park on Martin Luther King Day in 2015, Gov. Bruce Rauner took a tour. He praised the high school’s improvements.

So there’s no way the Southwest Side school could be one of the “crumbling prisons” Rauner described earlier this week, principal Brian L. Metcalf said Wednesday.

“He helped paint a canvas of our first floor hallway that is lined with the colleges and universities our students go to — and not prisons,” Metcalf said. “It was an amazing visit, which is why the ‘prisons’ is so offensive.”

Rauner was pressed repeatedly again Wednesday to name the “dozens” of Chicago Public Schools he says he has visited that led to his prison comparison, but again declined to say.

According to CPS, he’s visited two schools since he took office in early 2015.

Rauner went to Gage Park a week after his inauguration. Second, he saw Drake Elementary, 2710 S. Dearborn, on October 8. The number rises to three if a December 18 visit to see 11th and 12th graders in a special dual credit program at DeVry University counts. The governor’s social media accounts indicate two additional visits to Chicago charter schools in May 2015 and January 2016, but those publicly funded schools are managed by private operators.

Rauner and Democratic lawmakers in Springfield are still fighting over the state budget and over how schools ought to be funded.

Earlier this week, while touting Republican stopgap measures that’ll ensure schools can open in the fall, Rauner said, “The simple fact is that when you look objectively at the state of Chicago Public Schools, many of them are inadequate. Many of them are woeful, and some are just tragic. Many of them are basically almost crumbling prisons. They’re not a place a young person should be educated.”

He won’t apologize for the remarks that have sparked a #notaprison campaign on Twitter where parents, students and teachers have showcased their schools’ accomplishments.

On Wednesday, the governor again declined to name the schools that prompted the prisons comparison, saying, “I have worked for decades to try to improve Chicago Public Schools. I care very deeply about the children of Chicago and the teachers of Chicago. The schools, too many of the schools are depressing, depressing places.”

The governor has long been active in education reform, donating tens of millions of dollars to schools-related causes. Rauner College Prep High School, a Noble Network charter school, is even named for him.

“My wife and I have invested our time and resources there to a degree that I don’t know who else has done as much as we have,” Rauner said in his Springfield office. “ And we’re proud of it. I care very deeply about Chicago Public Schools. As I mentioned the other day, in my tours and visits and working in the schools, I have cried. It has brought tears to my eyes. When you go into some of the schools. Some are fine. Some are good, but too many of them are not. And it’s not fair to the students.”

Parents took to Facebook to try to identify the schools he’s been to by elimination, and crowdsourced a list called “Dozens of CPS schools not visited by Bruce Rauner” of more than 100 CPS schools.

This week, Gage Park students discussed Rauner during their morning circles, the principal said.

“My heart sank. The hurt in the kids’ eyes in the circle was the most hurtful to watch,” Metcalf said. “The students come through a lot of trauma and violence to get to a school where they feel safe, a school that challenges them, where teachers and adults nurture and respect them, and to be likened to a prison was very offensive.”

A few police officers are stationed at the school but “they sit in the back. They really have nothing to do because we don’t need them. We don’t have bars on our windows. We don’t have metal detectors, and we don’t wand our kids and our parents,” he said.

Dodge Elementary also is “lovely, colorful, full of children’s artwork, very welcoming from the moment you walk in the door,” said Lillian Allen, a mother of a current 6th grader, and three other children who’ve gone through CPS. No window bars or metal detectors there, either.

Rauner would have seen all that during his October tour and student assembly, she said.

“I wouldn’t have my kids there if it was a crumbling prison,” Allen said. “That was kind of like a slap in the face.”