Why can't they be fixed without closing them? Closing them only makes the students travel further and lose the friends they currently have as everyone is split up to different schools. I find it hard to believe that they couldn't figure out which personnel are not doing their job and replace just those on a schedule that does not require the school be closed. Surely not every teacher at one of these schools is doing a bad job. What is the board doing to further train teachers they feel are underperforming? What is the board doing to figure out WHY the school is having problems instead of just wanting to shut it down and hope that things will improve?

Also, how much of the poor performance is due to lack of support from the Board of Ed itself? I know a few teachers and they spend a lot of their own money on supplies that should be given by the board but are not. Some of the underperformance may be due to the board not supplying what they should and the teachers not able to supply it on their own.

It is criminal. CPS starves low-income neighborhood schools by having large class sizes, insufficient staffing and few resources, much less the basics -- like soap and paper for bathrooms and paper and pens. It is not uncommon for a teacher's CPS supplies total up to 2 reams of paper and a packet of pencils -- for the entire year! It is simply a grand plan to privatize education and let AUSL and charter operators reap obscene profits. Why can't CPS fulfill its legal requirement to give support to probationary schools rather than closing them down or handing them over to a private operator? Because the crony contracts must be fed! This is Chicago, after all.

I agree - fix them without closing them. A school is not the building; it's the people in them and the teaching & learning that happens in them. Closing the building won't fix anything unless you have to tear it down and replace it for safety reasons. As for the potential gang violence being discussed now on TV, I want to know when our schoolkids are going to get it drummed into them, starting in 1st grade, that public property is no one's "turf," and violence is not acceptable as a tool of social interaction? The alleged grownups in charge of safety should be stamping out the violence, not trying to devise ways to adapt to it.

If classes are reduce to just 20 students significant changes can occur in schools. It's really very simple and that's why I send my kids to St. Benedict.

My daughter worked at a charter school and the teachers were treated disgracefully. She finally quit when she couldn't take it anymore. The area was dangerous and several of the teachers were victims of crimes. She loved her students and misses them, but the administration made working there impossible. Closing schools is not the answer. Charter schools are not the answer. Social justice teaches us that people have to have unions to protect them from being treated inhumanely. The administrations need to be dismissed.

Many students in CPS need very small classrooms or small group instruction. They need care from a teacher who cares about teaching and learning. Some students cannot progress in over crowded conditions. Conditions that have been a part of the system for decades. CPS needs to have Reading Specialists who know the strategies students need in order achieve at their very best. CPS stop closing schools. Place more highly qualified teachers in classrooms. Rehire some of those Reading Specialist that Ron Huberman laid off.

How can the firing and replacement of all administrators and staff be the solution to fixing an under-performing school? Shame on CPS for even exploring this as an option. What other factors have been considered? Class size? Lack of resources or support from the Board of Ed, admin, or city? I am certain there are many highly-qualified educators that have given their lives to this profession and the success of their students.

This is shameful and any respect I had for CPS leaders is gone.

My son teaches at a south suburban school in a community that is not unlike Englewood or the west side. Yesterday, he had 8 students who showed up to school "high" on drugs. In his first year of teaching, he found a gun. The administration and the community continually decide to deny their problems. Last year, he prepared an hour long talk for parents of the whole school district (roughly 6000 in number) on how to get their kids to read over the summer. Guess how many showed up?....mmm, 100, 50, 25??.....no, it was zero!!! Yet, when a sizable grant was issued to this district to promote an all freshman school to get these kids reading (most are at the 4th grade level), the community suddenly became vocal and voted against it. It seems that we like to blame the teachers, the police, etc. for problems in these communities but the reality is the community digs its own grave and resists help in many forms. Perhaps the only answer is shutting down the community. Oh yeah, Chicago tried that when it bull-dozed the projects and the population moved to the south suburbs.
Let's quit blaming everything on the people who try to help those who really don't want help. Bad schools usually are due to bad students and bad parents. Face it. Blaming staff is even more demoralizing. By changing schools and staff it is no different than students constantly changing schools and this only supports more instability. A friend of mine is also a teacher in CPS and she has been demoralized by increasing hours that include her kids being fed during school time. She has become a baby sitter, not a school teacher. It is a shame that her skills are not being utilized. It will become increasingly difficult for anyone to enter the teaching profession with its challenges and instability of employment. So, where will that leave our children?

The elephant in the CPS living room is poverty. 84% of CPS students are eligible for free or reduced lunch; that's basically a poverty index. Myriad studies over decades conclusively link family income/parent education level...with low achievement in school. Stop blaming schools and teahers - they're doing their jobs, students are showing growth. Are they 'at grade-level'? No. Because they start so far behind. How do we begin to address the REAL issues? Invest heavily in Early Childhood education and prenatal counseling for young and unwed mothers; Drop class sizes. Hire nurses, social workers, guidance counselors, drama, art and music teachers, hire Chicago Park District playground staff to mentor these kids, hire truant officers. Also fund vocational ed programs. Its unrealistic to think everyone is going to be a software engineeror an MBA. Poverty, that's the unspoken issue - NOT bad teachers or schools that should be closed. This is just a business plan for politically connected AUSL and Charter operators, like UNO's Juan Rangel.

Closing schools and sending the kids away is a fatal remedy. The kids are the soul of the neighborhood, and the neighborhood school is the heart of the community. While the school may be sick, you cannot rip the heart and soul out without dehumanizing and killing the patient. Also, great teachers can be found even in the worst schools. Why fire them all? The neighborhood school is the glue that holds the community together. Sick schools should be rehabilitated, not closed.

I am strongly in favor of closing schools that have a very low academic performance, such as very low test scores or very low graduation rates. The culture in a school comes from both the staff and the students. Replacing the staff may not be sufficient if the students still have the same culture of low achievement. Placing these students in a new environment is a means to change the student culture. I applaud CPS for taking bold actions to address these issues.

I have taught high school in the Austin Community for the last 7 years. Our school is on probabtion because our graduation rate went down, our students are unable to pass an Advanced Placement exam, and we are unable to reach the goal of 30% of juniors scoring a 20 or better on the ACT. The graduation is tricky. With 100 freshmen, there were 10 we just couldn't graduate. Fifteen more left our school, went to other CPS schools and did not graduate. That counted against our graduation rate. Fifteen more were incarcerated - they weren't graduating either. One student was murdered and that counted against our graduation rate. OUr rate went from 78% to 49%. When the principal gave this information to the Chief Area Officer, his response was the rules are the rules.

We are a small school with 100 incoming freshmen last year. 60% of them read at a 4th grade level. Ten came in wearing ankle bracelets. Five had probation officers and one had two probation officers. Our principal hired two part-time truant officers to help us get kids in school. One student, whose parent had registered him but hadn't shown up for class after three weeks of school, came out of his house and went after the truant officer with a baseball bat. 95% of our students live at or below the poverty line. Almost all students would raise their hands if asked if they had a relative or friend who had been murdered. The children born during the crack cocaine epidemic are now in high school. Teachers and administrators working in "failing" schools are really working in a war zone but no one wants to acknowledge that. Neighborhood schools are a mirror of the community and until we do something about poverty, not much will change in these schools.

The schools should not be closed, they should be 100% restructured. Only the top 5-10% of the teachers should be allowed to stay and the rest should not be allowed to teach in CPS again. The principle and any upper management staff should not be allowed in the CPS system under any job or condition again. Eliminate the problems from the system. Trash only brings more trash and then you have a garbage dump. Any of the eliminated people should have their pensions under review for stealing from the State based on doing nothing in their job descriptions.

The kids and area deserve to have their school. This is where they feel safe. If you start sending kids to schools where they feel threatened or uncomfortable, the chances they go into a deep shell increases. It is an unjustace to them and their community. Create a new environment with strict controls and learning and the ones who want to improve themselves will flurish. The trash will go to the dump.

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