If you've seen one you've seen one but more than one... The tangled claims of CICS, Chicago's largest 'public school'
From one point of view, Chicago International Charter School (CICS), is the largest public school (i.e., one school) in the City of Chicago -- and probably in the United States of America. Under the smokescreen that one charter school in Chicago can have several so-called "campuses," CICS began expanding when Arne Duncan was still a novice "Chief Executive Officer" at the nation's third largest school system. And by the time Duncan left Chicago, still without ever having taught a day in his life in a real public school, to become the United States Secretary of Education in January 2009, CICS, one "school," stretch more than 20 miles, from its "Northtown campus" at Peterson and Pulaski to its South Side "campuses" on 95 St. or over to the west at 115th St.
But once CICS teachers began organizing into the unions of the American Federation of Teachers, suddenly CICS was either one or many "schools," depending upon how it suited the CICS version of union avoidance.