Vallas: CTU’s community schools less about students, more about union power

Boosting “sustainable community schools” and killing selective enrollment and other public-school choices is the Chicago Teachers Union’s answer to fix city schools. But the push is about union power rather than raising student achievement.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union’s appointed school board have created controversy with their recommendation to move away from selective enrollment schools and toward “sustainable community schools.”

Their school model claims to be a “holistic” approach to education and spends more on resources such as housing or food assistance, medical or dental care, mental health services, English language or parenting classes. But it is just the latest in the national teachers union playbook to dress themselves up as advocates for children when in reality they just want more money and power.

They promote neighborhood schools while insisting public support for private, public charter and selective enrollment schools are a financial threat to neighborhood schools.

Don’t be fooled.

Moving Chicago Public Schools away from selective enrollment schools and toward sustainable community schools will deprive poor Chicago families, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latino, of quality school choices. It will tighten CTU’s public education monopoly.

First, let’s correct CTU, Johnson and his appointed school board members’ misinformation campaign.

Myth No. 1: The existence of public charter and selective enrollment schools means neighborhood schools are financially short changed.

Not so. State and local school funding formulas require the money to follow students. Yet many public charter schools in CPS actually receive far less funding per student – around $8,600 less – and virtually no capital or facility support. This is despite enrolling more than 54,000 students and educating 10% of all elementary school students and 25% of all high school students.

As for selective enrollment schools, they are 11 of the 147 high schools in CPS. All but two spend less per student than the district average.

Myth No. 2: Support for public school choices such as selective enrollment and charter schools is structural racism.

The numbers show otherwise. Public charter schools and selective enrollment schools in Chicago overwhelmingly serve low-income and minority families. Among public charter school students, 97.8% are Black or Latino and 86% come from low-income households.

Of the over 12,000 students who attend Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools, over 70% are Black or Hispanic and over 50% are low income. Students at these schools reach academic proficiency at higher rates than CPS students districtwide. Nine of the 11 selective enrollment high schools have a higher percentage of their 11th grade students scoring proficient in reading and math on the SAT compared to the CPS district-wide percentage.

While only one general-education Chicago public high school, Lincoln Park High School, had more than half of its 11th grade students score at or above proficiency in reading and math, seven of the selective enrollment high schools had more than half of their students proficient in reading and math on the SAT.

Let’s be clear, the transition away from public school choice such as charter or selective enrollment schools will largely hurt low-income or Black and Hispanic families as CPS takes away alternatives to failing and often unsafe neighborhood schools.

Reality: The CTU has been largely responsible for the deterioration of Chicago’s public school system.

The distressing truth is Chicago’s public education system is deteriorating, and that’s largely because of the destabilization brought on by CTU leadership’s actions.

The shift towards militant strategies since 2010 has resulted in a sharp decline in educational standards. The prolonged closure of school campuses during the pandemic also had a devastating effect on student achievement and youth violence.

Student proficiency remains worse than before the pandemic. Just 1 in 4 CPS third-through eighth-grade students are reading at grade level and about 1 in 6 are meeting grade-level standards in math. For Black and Latino children, the scores are significantly worse.

CTU leadership further exacerbates the situation by pushing the district away from any sort of accountability for students, teachers or schools. The district covers up its failures by “socially promoting” unprepared children to the next grade level through its adoption of a softer assessment system that minimizes test results for students, teachers and their schools. The attack on selective enrollment schools is a part of that effort to de-emphasize testing.

The CTU’s sustainable community schools model is all about strengthening CTU control.

“Sustainable community schools” is a model operated in partnership by CPS and CTU in 20 community schools where community organizations provide wrap-around academic, health and social support beyond the traditional school day. This begs the question: Why isn’t every CPS neighborhood school a community school right now? Why isn’t every school inviting outside groups to come in and partner?

Because the CTU wants total control.

If the objective is to truly improve neighborhood schools, this requires truly empowering the community through their elected Local School Councils and their principals to:

• Open campuses in the early morning, keep them open through the afternoons, evenings, weekends, holidays and through the summer.
• Lengthen the instructional day and year to make up for lost instructional time during COVID-19 and to help students with special needs.
• Determine their own school staffing model to make teacher and other staff changes that, in their judgement, best meet their students’ needs.
• Restructure schools, especially neighborhood high schools, by adopting magnet type models that will expand local school offerings and attract more students.
• Partner with other education and occupational training institutions such as colleges, trade unions and private employers to access occupational training programs and work-study opportunities.
• Invite charter schools or alternative school providers to occupy or share space in near-empty buildings.
• Change their local school model, bringing in a better-proven model, even converting their school to a public charter school if the school is failing or unsafe.
• Consolidate struggling and severely under-enrolled schools using the Englewood STEM High School model in which CPS closed four small high schools in a South Side neighborhood, consolidating students into the new, well-resourced STEM high school.

None of these are in the current sustainable community schools model. These efforts should be adopted rather than eliminating successful public school choice options for Chicago families. The current system is not empowering Local School Councils to improve their schools as needed for their respective communities.

Fundamental to addressing the public education crisis in Chicago is to recognize the schools are governed by a self-sustaining, centralized command and control organizational structure that diverts far too much money from the classrooms and protects the teachers union’s restrictive collective bargaining agreement. The CTU will oppose any changes that in any way impact its members’ workload, job descriptions, job security or union membership numbers.

Chicago’s education model must be dictated by student needs, not by the self-interest and power demands of union bosses.