COMMENTARY: Emanuel’s push for charter schools is risky gamble, says former teacher

Rahm gambles with school closings: Will it pay off for Chicago kids?

We saw the images last Thursday – perhaps in person or perhaps on our television screens. We saw the crying children. We saw the angry parents. We saw the outrage of teachers. What we didn’t see was the mayor.

Rahm Emanuel was on a family ski vacation in Utah when Chicago Public Schools announced plans to close 61 school buildings, a record-setting number. When he returned for a Saturday news conference he bristled at questions about his absence and said he had been in close communication with the office throughout the process.

It would have been more fitting had the mayor gone to Nevada instead of Utah for his vacation—because he has just made a major gamble. He’s pushed all of his poker chips forward, placing both his re-election and the future of Chicago’s children on the line.

Despite appearances, however, this is not a move the mayor has made haphazardly. Emanuel has a plan, and this is only an early step in that plan. I take it as a given that he is always six and half steps ahead of whatever’s been publicly announced.

While CPS is closing schools, 14 new schools will open in Chicago next year—charters.

When I first heard the argument that school closings are being caused by charter expansion, I dismissed it as a conspiracy. The district was, after all, facing a $1 billion deficit, which it claimed school closings would rectify. But once you discover that school closings will actually cost CPS more money next year, the conspiracy theories start to make sense.

The closures create opportunities for rapid charter expansions, of which Emanuel has been a strong supporter. A spokeswoman with the Noble charter network told me in January that the biggest obstacles to expansion are money and buildings. Well, there’s a whole bunch of school buildings that are suddenly open now.

Emanuel was evasive at his news conference about what would happen to the closed buildings, arguing that the focus should be on children’s education and not the physical buildings. Some have speculated that CPS will attempt to sell the buildings, but other cities that have tried that have failed miserably, such as Philadelphia. Giving the buildings to charter schools seems to be the more likely option, especially since there will be 14 new charters opening next year, many of which still have undetermined locations.

What’s next for students and teachers?

There is frustration with CPS over large class sizes – 30 plus students – the district is embracing. Parents at the West Belden campus of Chicago International Charter School said their primary reasons for enrolling students in the charter school included smaller class sizes and a distrust of the CPS bureaucracy. Many parents are also furious at CPS because closures will force their children to travel through gang territories on the way to school. To many of these parents, a charter school that is closer to home and has smaller class sizes may look like a pretty attractive option.

Students who enroll in one of Chicago International’s elementary campuses, like West Belden, have the option to continue with the charter’s network through high school. A Chicago Teachers Union representative argued this gives the network long-term access to students, and the dollars the state allots for them.

But the biggest gain the charter movement just scored may be the hordes of teachers looking for employment after this school year. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, CPS CEO, has refused to give an estimation of how many teachers will be laid off from the closures. CPS sent a press email disputing reported claims about teacher layoffs:

“Claim: 1,000 teachers will lose their jobs and get ‘pink slips’

“Fact: This is not accurate. There are more than 1,100 teachers in underutilized schools that CPS is proposing to close and consolidate into higher performing “welcoming” schools. Per a joint agreement made with the CTU last fall, many teachers will follow students to their new welcoming school. Teachers must be tenured and high-quality, and there must also be a position in their field available to the new welcoming school.”

The key word in there is “tenured.” Tenure is based on seniority. Many “high quality” teachers might not be tenured because they are early in their careers. Many non-tenured teachers at closed and saved schools alike could be laid off per the joint agreement, which means the district is potentially losing a huge pool of talent.

One of the schools saved from the final closing list is Brentano Math & Science Academy in Logan Square. At the Fullerton community meeting the school’s teachers presented on the growth of the school’s students— many of them from immigrant families. Several of the teachers responsible for that growth do not have tenure, according to a source at the school.

School officials in Clark County, Nevada (which includes Las Vegas) saw the opportunity and sent a recruiter to Chicago to scoop up some of the soon to be unemployed teachers. Teachers who want to stay in this city and teach urban populations will have few other options but to join the expanding charters.

I’ve seen this happen personally as a public school teacher in San Francisco.

State budget cuts resulted in more than 20,000 teachers receiving layoffs in California in 2010. I was one of them, as were many friends. These layoffs were not based on performance or the needs of our individual schools, but rather on district-wide seniority in our subject areas.

Some of us were eventually hired back by our districts once there were new openings. However, the majority of my peers ended up seeking employment elsewhere and landed jobs in charter schools across the Bay Area.

Keeping charters accountable and transparent

Charters receive public funding, but are run by private networks. Some have demonstrated impressive student achievement, such as the Noble network, which accounted for nine of the top 10 scoring schools on the ACT last year. Others have not.

The Shabazz network’s DuSable campus, for example, saw less than 6 percent of its students score as proficient on the Prairie State Achievement Examination, more than 20 percentage points below the district’s average. And until recently, there has been little oversight of charters.

Last month CPS adopted stricter academic and financial accountability standards for charter schools. Two schools were recommended for closure and another six were placed on a warning list for poor performance.

But before we pat the district on the back for a job well done, it should be noted that, unlike the neighborhood schools, charter campuses recommended for closure will be phased out gradually. Because of this, the Aspira charter network, which has a campus recommended for closure, has still been approved for a new campus.

Meanwhile CPS approved 12 new charter campuses. Two more campuses were approved last week by an independent state commission, even though CPS denied its applications.

Four of the new campuses belong to the UNO network, which has been approved for a contract of five more years, despite the Chicago Sun-Times ongoing investigation into financial improprieties. The network’s president, Juan Rangel, served as co-chairman of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign and has a salary of $250,000. The Sun-Times reported that he has several relatives on the payroll, including a niece who receives nearly $50,000 as an apprentice kindergarten teacher.

#nerdland Chicago school closures is just like Detroit. Meant to open door to charter schools & break teacher unions.

— Lady Dee Tee (@LadyDeeTeeMI) March 23, 2013

Step 1 open charter schools that are exempt from regular oversight Step 2 close public schools for under-utilization tinyurl.com/cdovm9o

— Josh Rubin (@TerpRubin) March 24, 2013

Read more anti-school closings tweets.

The problem is that Chicago charter schools, for the most part, have been very resistant to transparency. The day CPS presented its stricter standards to the Board of Education, UNO parents and teachers protested against CPS outside the district headquarters. Were they protesting accountability?

Even more perplexing was the statement released by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools regarding the new standards:

“While the Chicago charter community embraces accountability, this process. is simply shoddy authorizing. The decision also demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the charter school model and attempts to unilaterally change charter contracts with no notice or partnership.”

Why are local leaders of the charter movement fighting accountability?

Charter expansion could work. Before becoming a public school teacher, I was a tutor at a charter in Boston and witnessed innovations that led to incredible student growth. However, there’s no guarantee.

Emanuel is taking a major risk betting on charters as a fix-all solution. Some charters are outperforming neighborhood schools, yes, but plenty aren’t. If the mayor’s gamble doesn’t work out, it’ll be the kids who pay the price.

The Chicago Tribune, which previously endorsed closures as a budget fix, published an editorial this week calling for the city to “unchain” charters and allow rapid expansion. However, it might be wiser for Chicago to take some time to make sure all its existing charters are living up to expectations before greenlighting more.

By forcing parents and teachers into a situation where charter schools become the only option in the neighborhood, Emanuel is essentially abandoning any notion that the public school system can be fixed. And that’s a shame. While charter advocates are right when they say their movement gives parents choice, the fact is that some parents choose to send their kids to a neighborhood public school. Where’s their choice?