PHOTO/LEW ROSENBAUM
CHICAGO—Gale Math and Science Academy, a K-8 school in Rogers Park (the northeast corner of Chicago), sits in a pocket long devastated by poverty. More than 98% of the students are eligible for free lunches, and more than 95% of the children are African, African-American, Caribbean, Asian or Latino. More than 30 languages are spoken in a student body of less than 500. Half the students will be different at the end of the school year (transfers in and out.)
Last year, Chicago’s Board of Education targeted Gale to be closed. They claimed that there were too few students for the number of classrooms. Nowhere did this estimate take account that 15% of the students already have individual educational plans (IEPs)—undoubtedly many more need IEPs but have not been identified. After parents protested the CPS script and disrupted the CPS sham hearing, the Board of Education did not close Gale. The Board promised that funds saved by closing 49 schools last year would go to the schools still open, to give them more resources.
Instead, all CPS schools had their budgets slashed: Gale is losing $800,000!
Occupy Rogers Park Chicago, along with parents from Gale school, have been protesting these cutbacks, comparing the funding for Gale with the University of Chicago Lab School, a private school where Mayor Emanuel sends his children. Education in this country has never been equal for all. There have always been elite schools for the wealthy, and the Lab School is one of them, where tuition costs almost $30,000 a year.
Not all public schools get equal funding. The more wealthy suburbs on the northern fringe of Chicago have a higher property tax base and therefore have more money per student than Chicago schools. But even within Chicago, the schools that achieve the best ranking (selective enrollment schools) raise large amounts of money from private sources, including the parents who send their children to these schools.
The inequality at Gale is not a mistake, a well-meaning policy gone awry. It is part of a calculated and calculating system that originated in slavery (where education was illegal) and continues today within a society that no longer needs an educated workforce (robots that replace workers do not go to school.) Parents at Gale have voiced their demands: the budget crisis is phony. Shake the money loose! Give us the resources we need! Instead, the city threatens teachers: “dramatically improve” instruction in 60 days or else!
The elected Local School Council in theory controls the purse strings of each school. This is supposed to give the school the local control that determines success. But this is a mockery, when the tiny amount of money they have is determined by the city, and the poverty in the community remains the same. The reality is that neither the funding nor the improvement is going to come until the federal government steps in to guarantee equitable funding for all schools, with the resources to help every child reach his or her individual potential. This is what nationalization of education in the interests of the people would look like.
