Despite concerns from the public and elected officials, the board at its monthly meeting voted 4-3 in favor of a trio of motions to help Chicago Public Schools acquire land and take additional steps toward building the new school.
Chicago Board of Education
The average bus trip districtwide is 39 minutes and over 80% of rides are under an hour, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, but 365 diverse learners currently have rides lasting more than 90 minutes each day.
The teachers say they were encouraging students to participate in the process of free speech by protesting metal scrap company General Iron, which planned to move into their South Side community.
Former board member DwayneTruss called for the inspector general of the Chicago Public Schools to probe the deal that would allow the high school to be built at 24th and State streets, once home to the demolished CHA Harold L. Ickes homes.
The city’s Board of Education on Wednesday will vote on a one-year, $10 million contract renewal with the Chicago Police Department that would allow it to provide school resource officers in several Chicago high schools.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has tapped former alderperson Michael Scott Jr. as a new member of the Chicago Board of Education, barely a month after the former Committee on Education and Child Development chair stepped down from the City Council.
Board of Education approves new CPS budgets
Plans for a new Near South high school were suddenly put on hold Wednesday after Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez abruptly removed the item before the city’s Board of Education voted to approve the district’s budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday announced Chapman, a former Chicago Public Schools grad and chairwoman of the Far South Community Advisory Council, will fill the seat vacated by former board member Amy Rome last summer.
Chicago Public Schools said it expects to begin publishing student discipline and safety data in the coming weeks, a year after dozens of high schools voted to reduce or eliminate their school resource officer (SRO) programs.
The Chicago Board of Education will vote this week on that proposed calendar, which includes a start date of Aug. 22, 2022. That’s a week earlier than this year’s start date of Aug. 30 and well before the typical post-Labor Day start time for the district.
Last month, there were more than 700 special education students who had still not been routed onto a bus during the current academic year. But as of this week, each one of those children are now receiving their legally mandated transportation from the district.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez on Wednesday said his team is beginning to set up plans and solidify a specific health metric that can be used to decide when to shut down in-person learning within a school or across the district itself.
Chicago Public Schools on Wednesday announced that its 20th-day enrollment stands at 330,411 students. That’s a 3% decline from the 340,658 students who were enrolled in the district last year.
Some Chicago public schools will retain their resource officers, following a split vote by the Board of Education to approve a one-year, $11 million contract with the Chicago Police Department.
The former San Antonio Independent School District superintendent now finds himself leading a district that is struggling to execute contact tracing and COVID-19 testing as students resume in-person learning.
The Board of Education will vote this week on a one-year, $11 million extension to continue its school resource officer program despite an ongoing push from some students and advocates to have police removed from schools.
