The General Assembly’s Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force called a special session for Monday, March 28 at 5:30 p.m. (Erie Neighborhood House, 1347 W. Erie) to hear from schools and communities impacted by the proposed closings and consolidations.

If CPS refuses to wait for state guidelines to make their facilities planning transparent and accountable, “they could at least look at the recommendations and best practices” developed by the task force (pdf) for “ways to manage this smoothly so that nearly 5,000 students aren’t being hurt by their educational decisions,” said task force member Cecile Carroll of Blocks Together.

The announcement of the actions last week by CPS interim chief Terry Mazany violates an earlier promise to include parents and educators in the planning of facility decisions, said Xian Barrett of Chicago Teachers Union, another task force member.

Issues of equity

The new list of consolidations seems to illustrate the issue of equity raised by the task force.

As Catalyst has reported, five neighborhood schools are being moved into buildings that got an average of $414,00 in capital investments over the past two years, to provide charter and Renaissance 2010 schools with buildings where, it turns out, CPS spent an average of $3.3 million over the same period.

“They are pushing regular schools into bigger, older buildings that have had much less investment,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund in Washington, D.C., and a pro-bono consultant to the task force.

At Carpenter Elementary, students are moving from a 54-year-old, 82,000 square-foot buildilng which has had nearly $10 million invested in it since 1999 ($4 million of that in the past year) and into Talcott Elementary, a 116-year-old, 142,900 square-foot buildling that’s gotten $5.7 million since 1999.  Ogden International High School, which has been sharing Carpenter’s building, will get the entire facility.

Broken down for space, Carpenter has gotten $46 per square foot since 2004, versus $3.26 at Talcott, Filardo said.

Half the national standard on crowding

At Cather Elementary, 491 students coming from Beidler Elementary will push building occupancy to 80 square feet per student, which is a little more than half the national norm.  That’s “way too crowded, unless they are planning on putting 30-plus kids in each classroom,” Filardo said.