On April 13, Generation All released its plan for revitalizing neighborhood high schools to more than 300 Chicagoans gathered at the Ukrainian Cultural Center.
The event highlighted innovative programs already underway at neighborhood high schools and also called for a movement to infuse them with new partnerships, energy and resources.
"We're here to celebrate and to take action,"
Beatriz Ponce de León, Generation All executive director told participants, who represented nearly every Chicago neighborhood. "Everybody in the city has a role to play."
A key proposal in the plan is to halt the closing and opening of new high schools until a comprehensive citywide plan is in place.
In the past decade, Chicago has dramatically expanded high school options for families, including charter schools and selective enrollment schools, even while its student enrollment declined,
Ponce de León noted. As a result, she said, many neighborhood high schools are now under-enrolled and under-resourced.
"We want Chicagoans to consider the possibility that the talent, the energy, the resources that have gone into opening so many new schools could have been spent to significantly improve our neighborhood public high schools," she said to applause.
Equity is another goal of the plan, which calls for redirecting money to schools serving students with the greatest needs. Equity isn't the same as equality,
Ponce de León explained. Rather, she said, equity is about fairness, "really giving young people what they need."
The plan was crafted by more than 30 education, community, civic and student leaders who met over 18-months. It already has received widespread attention, including a Chicago Sun-Times editorial in support of the moratorium on opening and closing schools.
Chicago Public Schools is expected to announce its commitments to the Generation All plan in the coming weeks. The district, along with the Chicago Teachers Union and The Chicago Community Trust, is a founding member of the Generation All initiative, which launched in 2013 with support from the Ford Foundation. Janice Jackson, chief education officer of Chicago Public Schools, attended the Generation All event and serves on its advisory committee.
Chicago Teachers Union President
Karen Lewis, a founding member of Generation All, also spoke at the plan launch.
As a former high school chemistry teacher, she said she observed first-hand the unintended impact of new schools on neighborhood schools.
"There has to be a way for that to be un-done," she insisted, "not by taking away from the schools that we have but by supporting the ones that need it."
Rayshaune Burns, a senior at Foreman High School in Belmont Cragin, spoke from a student's perspective on the opportunities and challenges at his neighborhood high school.
Four years ago, he was set to enroll at a selective school on the South Side but switched to Foreman when his family moved north. There, a favorite teacher guided him to enroll in an afterschool college preparatory program and in Mikva Challenge, a youth civic action program. His involvement with Mikva led him to join the CPS student advisory council where he gained access to a "huge network of people" who encouraged him to enroll in still more programs that built his speaking skills and ability to work with other people.
Sadly, his favorite teacher and many like him were laid off because of budget cuts, Burns said. His English class at Foreman is now so large that students are sometimes left without seats and forced to stand. The school lacks more than teachers, he said, "we have tiles missing from the floor, books are super-old, computers outdated, the fields aren't fit to play on so we can't host sporting events.
"It's unfair," he continued, "because students who go to Foreman aren't worth any less than students that go to selective enrollment schools."
