Regarding closing up to 50 Chicago schools, Mayor Emanuel said that “Not doing anything and allowing 56 percent of African American male adolescents to drop out would be a political concern to me.”

We’re not asking the Mayor to do nothing. And we agree with him that past school leadership decisions have led to severely under-resourced schools in some of our most under-resourced communities.

But the right answer to one set of bad decisions is not another bad decision. Report after report show the folly of the mayor’s mass school closings plan. We have learned that the closed schools are mostly on a par with the receiving schools academically and in terms of maintenance costs. Mental health professionals have stated that CPS transition planning is inadequate to meet students’ emotional needs. Substantial money will not be saved. Student safety is a rising threat. The massive instability from 50 school closings is much more likely to increase, not decrease the drop out rate of African-American males and all other affected students.

Here’s what the mayor ought to be doing if he really cares about the students more than he cares about being a drum major for the corporate reform movement. He ought to be putting his considerable fund-raising and get-it-done energies into supporting the schools we have rather than shutting them down and replacing them with more mediocre charter schools. He ought to stop fighting the people who do the hard work of education every day. He ought to put aside his misplaced confidence in his own ideas about what’s best for other people’s children, and open his mind to the rich knowledge and experience of those who have actually walked the walk.

That would really be something.

I heard a few weeks ago that this move was coming – glad to see the formal withdrawal letter here:

We find that we cannot perform the work we wish to perform under the guise of Students for Education Reform.  Instead of feeling more empowered through our association and interaction with the organization and National staff, we feel constrained both in what is expected and what is possible. We are often perceived not as Students for Education Reform at the University of Chicago, an organization with distinct individualities, personalities, and experiences, but a rudimentary extension of the National organization.

Students for Education Reform is, of course, another well-funded attempt by the corporate reformers to fake grass roots support for their agenda, and is a spin-off from Democrats for Education Reform. We first heard of it when SFERs were being bused to see “Won’t Back Down.” Here’s a post from last year from the DePaul SFER Facebook page:

Don’t forget tomorrow 4:30pm in the Loyola Commuter Lounge we have our first session with Stand For Children!!!! The awesome SFERites from Loyola, UChicago, and Northwestern will be there as well!

Doesn’t their logo look like a lot like a baby bottle>>>

Fortunately, as the U of C letter reflects, most students can see through the propaganda.

Thanks to Erin Mason, one of the speakers at the press conference yesterday, you can watch all the statements at our press conference on You Tube.

Chicago Tribune:

On Tuesday, at a news conference held by Parents United for Responsible Education, which opposes the closings, a group of child mental health experts called on CPS to add social and emotional supports for students in closing schools. The experts also said CPS should allow counselors who have worked with students at schools being closed to move with those children to their new schools.

Erika Schmidt, director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, said that in a few schools she has noticed more students acting out and expressing concerns about the safety of going to a new school.

“There’s a level of anxiety and uncertainty that is making the ending of the school year very difficult,” Schmidt said. “Many of (the students) are scared to leave because they are going to schools that have traditionally been in conflict with them. They don’t think the welcoming schools will really be welcoming.”

ABC-7 TV

Mental health experts are seeing first-hand how the biggest school closing in the nation is already affecting the students.

I think the most important part of this is they feel disregard devalued they feel like nobody cares their school matters to them,” said Erika Schmidt, of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Schmidt works in closing and receiving schools. She and others say CPS is not even close to being prepared for handling the emotional needs of the kids. In addition, Schmidt says CPS is controlling what is being communicated to schools about the closings.

“My understanding is the principals are given scripts to talk to teachers about what could and couldn’t say about the closings,” said Schmidt.

When asked about the principal scripts, CPS and the mayor stuck to their script.

They spoke again about closing schools to provide a better education. As for emotional support, CPS says closing school students will have an 8 week class with a social worker.

Mental health experts say much more is needed.

CBS-2 TV did a nice piece at 5 pm, which I can’t find online, but which included footage of the press conference as part of a larger story about school closing protests. The story quoted Erin Mason, president of the Illinois School Counselor Association, describing students’ feelings about the possibility of their schools closing. It also included a clip of me speaking more generally about the closings.

They used the clip of me again at 10 PM with this quote: “This is the year for school closings and I think our mayor wants to be the number one school closer in the country.”

I’m still looking for a link to a WBEZ story this morning which included Erika Schmidt.

Everyone can do something.

Today PURE held a press conference with six child mental health experts who spoke out about the damage the proposed school closings may do to children, giving their professional backing to what parents, teachers, students and others have been saying over and over for the past few months. We faxed 11 powerful statements from those six and others to the Board of Education members this morning .

You can share these excellent resources with your networks. They need to be in the hands of parents, teachers, and other public school advocates wherever corporate reformers are moving to close big numbers of schools.

I was also able to speak out on Channel 2, the local CBS station – not sure when today it will air.

Lots of folks have been marching all over the city, making connections among all the schools threatened with closure. Many more are planning to be at the Board of Ed meeting tomorrow to make some noise as the decisions are made. You can be there.

You can start calling the Board of Education number now – 773-553-1600. If you’re not sure what to say, read any of these excellent articles that detail the many ways that CPS and the Mayor have lied about the schools. You’ll be inspired.

• Common Sense on School Closings by Newstips’ Curtis Black
• Few Chicago school closings will move kids to top-performing schools, by WBEZ’s Linda Lutton
• CPS closing documents raise questions about closing (CPS’s selective use of data), by the Tribune’s Bob Secter and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
• As school closing vote nears, questions remain on money, academics, safety, by Catalyst’s Sara Karp.

Do what you do, and what you can do. Just do something.

The following statements were presented at the PURE press conference on May 21, 2013 (press release here) and shared with the Chicago Board of Education members. They include information from a variety of child development perspectives which substantiate some of the concerns raised by parents and others at the school closing hearings and in other venues and events over the past months.

• Statement by Ann Aviles de Bradley, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies, Northeastern Illinois University
• Statement by Daniel Cooper, Assistant Director, Institute of Public Safety and Social Justice, Adler School
• Statement by Francisco X. Gaytan, Assistant Professor School of Social Work, Northeastern Illinois University
• Statement by Erin Mason, President, Illinois School Counselors Association
• Statement by Cassandra McKay-Jackson, Assistant Professor, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Statement by Erika Schmidt, Director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

Also included with the packet for the press and the Chicago Board of Education were:

• Statement from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
• Statement from the National Association of Social Workers
• Statement by Dr. Marisha L. Humphries, Assistant Professor, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, UIC Department of Educational Psychology; and
• “A Perfect Storm,” by Dr. Federico R. Waitoller, Assistant Professor, Department of Special Education, College of Education, UIC.
• Statement by Camille Williamson, Associate Director of Community Engagement, Adler School of Professional Psychology.

Erin Mason speaks at PURE press conference

Press Release **** For Immediate Release

 May 21, 2013

Contact:

Julie Woestehoff, Parents United for Responsible Education. 773-715-3989

Diane Horwitz, Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE). 847-332-2756

Ann Aviles de Bradley, Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University. 773-339-8479

Child mental health experts raise serious concerns about the impact of proposed mass school closings on Chicago students

Today, several notable social workers, counselors, and academic researchers from prominent Illinois and Chicago organizations and universities submitted a set of statements to the members of the Chicago Board of Education detailing their serious concerns about the potential negative impact of school closings on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students’ social-emotional health. Their statements are available here.

Tomorrow, the Board of Education is scheduled to consider approving up to 54 school closings and consolidations.

The experts shared their statements at a press conference held at Roosevelt University and sponsored by Parents United for Responsible Education, a Chicago public school parent advocacy organization, along with education professors Ann Aviles de Bradley and Diane Horwitz.

Among those speaking at the press conference were

• Ann Aviles de Bradley, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies, Northeastern Illinois University
• Daniel Cooper, Assistant Director, Institute of Public Safety and Social Justice, Adler School
• Francisco X. Gaytan, Assistant Professor School of Social Work, Northeastern Illinois University
• Erin Mason, President, Illinois School Counselor Association
• Cassandra McKay-Jackson, Assistant Professor, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Erika Schmidt, Director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

Significant concerns raised by these experts include grief and loss, issues of transition, schools as community cornerstones, inclusion of student voice, and lack of adequate mental health services.

Erin Mason, speaking on behalf of the Illinois School Counselor Association, said “not unlike losing a loved one, leaving a school that is closing may be devastating for some students and families who have built strong ties to faculty, staff and other families.” Mason cites articles that state, “transitions for some students result in academic difficulties, social/emotional problems, decline in self-concept, poor motivation, decreased attendance, and increased dropout rates,” and another which concludes, “States, schools, and districts need to recognize student mobility as a barrier to success.”

UIC’s Cassandra McKay-Jackson highlighted additional negative outcomes associated with school mobility, “(L)ow attachment (or school detachment) is related to higher levels of violent behavior and aggressive beliefs, more negatively perceived school climate, and lower academic motivation as well as higher risk for school dropout.”

According to Erika Schmidt, director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, “School communities are built on a network of important relationships. While the primary relationship is between the child and teacher, other relationships within the school – the principal, assistant principal, classmates, older and younger students, the security guard – all these people provide an integral role in supporting children and helping them thrive. The continuity of these relationships is critical for children whose lives may be frequently disrupted by trauma or loss. Without this kind of stability and continuity, children have a difficult time engaging in learning or even feeling like learning matters to them.”

One important group impacted by school actions are homeless students.“CPS has failed to provide needed support even for its most vulnerable homeless children.” Ann Aviles de Bradley added that “instability in both home and schooling environments is associated with the poorest educational outcomes.”

Approximately 18% of students impacted by school actions are Latino. NEIU’s Francisco Gaytan stated that “The complex lives of newcomer immigrant youth and Latinos often require a single, easily and regularly accessible site, where comprehensive and culturally sensitive services are available. Schools often are the only site that plays such a role in the lives of Latinos and immigrants.” Further, as one of the rare institutions that welcomes all, closing down a nearby neighborhood school would place a large burden on many immigrant Latino families when the school is quite possibly the only social service that they can access.

Many of the experts mentioned that significant cut-backs in mental health services make mass school closings even more problematic. Researchers stated thatproviding critical services for students experiencing mental health has become more difficult due to the closure of several community-based centers. Further, Illinois ranks third in the nation for cuts to mental health services and funding for community mental health services for children has been reduced by 13 percent between fiscal year 2009 and 2012. CPS has a ratio of approximately 1 social worker for every 1,000 students, which is well above the ratio recommended by the National Association of Social Workers, which is a ratio of 1:250. Similarly, elementary school counselors in CPS are only 1 to a school building and have student caseloads well beyond the American School Counselor Association’s recommended 1:250 ratio. Many of these also serve in a second clerical position as the special education case manager which severely limits the services they can provide to all students.

The efforts CPS has made so far to address these concerns have fallen far short of what our experts consider appropriate. Aviles de Bradley said, “The current whole class exercises that have been reported in some closing schools are simply inadequate to meet the myriad of complex individual needs of children and their families.”

Schmidt added, “CPS has demonstrated a disregard for the health and well being of these children and their families through its handling of the slated closures….CPS has assigned outsiders to go into each school to help bridge this transition. These are people the children do not know or trust and those people the children do know and trust are given scripts to program their communication, rather than being allowed to help the children deal with the fears and anxieties that inevitably attend such disruption in their lives. Children, parents, principals, teachers, and all the staff that make a school a community feel devalued by this impersonal and unrealistic handling of these closures.

According to Aviles de Bradley, “We must criticallyexamine and understand the potential negative outcomes, as they are not in the best interests of students, families, schools and their respective communities. This lack of planning and resources will be especially harmful to students experiencing poverty and homelessness. To minimize and ultimately eliminate the negative social-emotional impacts on students, a reconsideration of the proposed school actions must occur.

McKay-Jackson added, “When school detachment is coerced it could be likened to a traumatic event that occurs without any preparation, shattering feelings of security and promoting a feeling powerlessness and vulnerability to a potentially dangerous world. McKay-Jackson urges school leaders to involve students in their deliberations: Engaging student voice and their meaningful participation in positive decision- making also fosters social emotional development. Yet through the exclusion of student voices from the school closure conversation there has been a missed opportunity to support future school attachment. Supporting student voice does not require adults to abdicate their decision-making roles but it does invite youth to participate in joint problem solving, promoting an equity-based reform that requires participation of those who are intended to receive support and who have been most affected by inequitable policies.”

Mason’s statement for the Illinois School Counselor Association includes a detailed list of recommendations, including hiring critical staff from the closing school at the welcoming school and adding additional school counselors. She also recommends minimizing or eliminating administrative and clerical responsibilities of all school counselors so that they have the time to develop transition and adjustment plans for students from the closing and welcoming schools Suggested steps toward this would be creating a transition team at each school that would include parents, school counselors, and school social workers and using school social workers to offer positive, proactive programs to address student, family, and school community needs.

PURE’s response

Parents United for Responsible Education is grateful to all of these professionals who took the time to providetheir expertise and opinions about how Chicago’s proposed mass school closings may affect our children.

These experts’ concerns echo those of many parents who spoke out during the hearings and in other venues and events over the past months.

We have been more than disturbed by the apparent lack of attention by CPS leaders to parents’ concerns and to similar issues raised by education experts, including CPS teachers. We hope that today’s presentation by these professionals will be seriously and thoughtfully considered by those leaders before making a decision that clearly has the potential to cause a great deal of harm to so many children.

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M E D I A  R E L E A S E

More than 125 Chicago-area Attorneys Sign “Letter of Conscience” Against Massive Chicago Public School Closings

Public interest law community expresses outrage, urges more equitable, inclusive and strategic approach

For More Information:

Patricia Nix-Hodes (708) 218-2320; Amy Smolensky, (312) 485-0053; Jill Wohl, (773) 562-0159

May 17, 2013, Chicago – 128 Chicago-area lawyers with an estimated combined 2000 years of distinguished experience and leadership working towards justice and equity in education, health, housing, employment, economic security, safety, discrimination, citizenship, juvenile justice, and civil rights signed their names to a letter urging a halt to the Chicago Public School’s proposed closings and consolidations of 54 schools – the largest school action of its kind in the nation – in less than one year.

Titled “An Open Letter Seeking Justice in the School Closing Crisis,” the letter will be delivered to Mayor Emanuel, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Board of Education Chair David Vitale on Monday, May 20, 2013, and requests a response to be directed to Paul Strauss, who offered to sign the letter on the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law letterhead without hesitation.

“The attorneys signing this letter cannot, in good conscience, stand by and remain silent as the Board of Education moves to vote on this potentially disastrous course,” says Strauss, “Closing this many schools in such a poorly-planned and uninclusive manner marks a dangerous precedent. It sets the civil rights in education movement back decades.”

Child advocate Stacey Platt (773-732-2554), one of the attorneys who joined the Open Letter comments “It is a sad injustice for the children and families of the City of Chicago that neighborhood schools –which parents value and children need most of all–are neglected and closed and parent voices ignored.”

The letter cites the Illinois School Code and research criticizing the outsized move to “right size” the District, specifically, that the law of the land squarely asserts that “the primary responsibility for school governance and improvement is in the hands of parents, teachers and community residents at each school.” [5/34-18.43(a)(6)] The letter also highlights the racial and economic distribution, number of homeless students, and students receiving special education services who will be adversely affected by the proposed school actions, which will be voted on by the Board of Education on May 22, 2013.

Highlights of the Open Letter:

“[If carried out, these actions] will dramatically alter the school environment for vulnerable elementary students. More than 47,500 elementary students will be affected including more than 3,906 students experiencing homelessness and 2400 students requiring special education services. No such massive school closure has been attempted in the history of our City or our nation. This alone must give all reasonable people pause.

[T]his massive undertaking is being executed in advance of the delivery of a 10 year school facilities master plan, as required by Illinois law… As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once. Closing schools before sharing a clear, well-thought out plan for the City’s educational and economic future signals a perilous lack of accountability from our public administrators.

Overwhelmingly and almost exclusively, the communities of Chicago targeted for massive school closures are those on the City’s South and West Side: communities that are dramatically impoverished and predominantly comprised of African Americans. Such disparity is at best unsettling and is, indeed, provoking racial and economic divisiveness. Tensions run high before the actual closures have even been approved.

The proposed removal of so many schools from impoverished communities of color has been read as an ominous statement on the prospects of those living there. It only adds to the distress and despair, creating a feeling that the City is disinvesting where economic growth and stability is so important –and that we are a City divided.”

The letter coincides with a three-day citywide march protesting the closings, and comes at the same time that numerous community groups, media outlets, local aldermen, state and county legislators and even CPS’ designated hearing officers are expressing opposition and grave disappointment in the lack of strategy, meaningful inclusion, consistency, equity and adherence to requirements throughout the planning and public vetting process conducted by CPS.

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