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New ‘Southeast Area’ school will end years of overcrowding at Gallistel – but parents and teachers still feel disrespected as CPS hiring for the new school seems to be excluding teachers from the former schools...

David R. Stone - June 22, 2016

Tenth Ward alderwoman Sue Sadlowski Garza asked the Board of Education at its May 25, 2016 meeting to ensure that the teachers followed their students from Gallistel and Addams elementary schools to the new school on Chicago's southeast side. The Board's bureaucrats have ignored the request, and have been showing maximum disrespect for the veteran teachers, using a stop watch to limit interviews for teaching positions at the new school to three minutes or less per question. Substance photo by David Vance. Constructing a new public school to relieve overcrowding in two neighborhood schools should be good news in this time of budget austerity –- but parents who had lobbied for years to get the new school built are unhappy. To understand how the Chicago Board of Education is failing to satisfy some parents as it prepares to open the new Southeast Area Elementary School in September, it helps to know the historical background. This includes Chicago’s long history of racial and economic segregation, and chronic underfunding of schools in poor, ethnic minority neighborhoods.

Such is the neighborhood around the new school at 3930 E. 105th Street. The Chicago Board of Education is calling this the “Southeast Area,” but it is known by residents as the East Side. It is as far east as anyone can go in Chicago, alongside the Illinois/Indiana border, where many of the avenues are identified with letters rather than names. The population is predominantly Mexican-American and working class, as reflected in the enrollment at the local schools.

CPS’s biggest elementary school in the area is Gallistel Language Academy. Gallistel occupies five buildings in the shadow of the Chicago Skyway, between Ewing Avenue to the west and Avenue J to the east, and between 101st Street to the north and 104th Street to the south. Gallistel’s 1,195 students in grades pre-K through 8 are categorized as 95.8 percent Hispanic, 94.7 percent low income, and 22.7 percent native Spanish speakers with only “limited English,” according to the most recent (2015) overview of the school on the CPS website (http://cps.edu/Schools/Find_a_school, downloaded June 21, 2016).

The other CPS elementary school in the area, Jane Addams Elementary, at 10810 S. Avenue H, has similar enrollment statistics: Of its 900 students in pre-K through 8th grade, 96.9 percent are Hispanic, 88.8 percent are low income, and 30.0 percent have limited English, according to the 2015 CPS overview.

Both schools are overcrowded. Addams’ pre-K classes are housed in a separate building that CPS leases from the Catholic Diocese. Gallistel can only fit grades pre-K through 4 in its own building. For the upper grades, it leases a former Catholic elementary school that was built in 1910, plus a one floor in the St. Francis de Sales Catholic high school. The fourth and fifth Gallistel buildings are mobile units parked on the lot behind the original “main” Gallistel building. This sort of portable school in an oversize trailer has a long history in Chicago. In the 1960s, a Superintendent of Schools whose last name was Willis used them instead of busing to perpetuate segregation in crowded schools, so old-time Chicagoans still call them “Willis Wagons.”

(Full disclosure: This reporter is a teacher at Gallistel. In keeping with the mission and philosophy of Substance News, I will report the facts as accurately as I can, but will not hide my opinions behind a fake journalistic “objectivity.” I have first-hand experience of Gallistel’s overcrowding, for I have no classroom of my own for my five daily self-contained special education classes. Instead, I move between two buildings, to teach in three different classrooms that are used by other teachers at other times during the day. One of my classrooms is called the Library, but Gallistel has no librarian and no budget to buy library books. Most of the day, the “Library” is used as the school’s Art classroom.)

The overcrowding at Gallistel is not new. One long-time teacher said when she came to the school in 1992, the former Catholic elementary school was already being used as the Gallistel “Branch.”

Parental and community activism to demand better facilities is not new, either. The archives of Substance News have numerous reports of parents demanding the Board of Education do something about the overcrowding at Gallistel. For example, on May 22, 2008, Gallistel supporters sent 13 buses full of people to a Board of Education hearing on capital expenditures.

The community has remained politically active since then, and in 2015 elected a counselor from Jane Addams Elementary, Sue Sadlowski Garza, to Chicago’s City Council. Of Chicago’s 50 aldermen, she is the only one who is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.

By the time of her election, plans for the new Southeast Elementary School had already been announced. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the announcement at Gallistel, on September 16, 2013. Earlier that summer, the mayor’s hand-picked Board of Education had closed nearly 50 neighborhood schools.

As the new alderman (or alderwoman) for the 10th ward, Sue Sadlowski Garza campaigned to make sure the new school would be a true neighborhood school open to local residents, not a charter school. That will happen, but now there is new campaign – to allow teachers from Gallistel and Addams to follow their students to the new school.

The previous 10th ward alderman, John Pope, also had been active trying to force the Board of Education to solve the overcrowding at Gallistel. He, too, insisted that the teachers follow their students into any new school. Teachers who were part of the struggle over the past few years tell me that he received such a commitment in a letter from Barbara Byrd Bennett, who was then chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools.

Since then, the Board of Education voted to split the neighborhood into three elementary attendance areas, with students assigned to Addams, Gallistel or Southeast Area Elementary, depending on where they live. Thus both Addams and Gallistel will lose students, and therefore lose teachers. The Board is now describing its action as the creation of a new school, rather than a consolidation of existing schools. Under the Chicago Teachers Union contract with the Board, a “consolidation” gives teachers the right to follow their students, but creation of a new school does not.

Teachers from Addams and Gallistel are now promised only a chance to interview for a job at the new school, but haven’t been promised any priority in hiring. At an after-school meeting called last week by Gallistel’s union delegates, most of the teachers present said they had applied to teach at the new school, but had not been called in for an interview. One of the few Gallistel teachers who had already been interviewed said the interviewer told her there were already 500 candidates being interviewed for the 50 or so teaching positions. She was not interviewed by the new principal, but by an outside specialist brought in for the interview process.

Due to the number of candidates, the interviewer explained, the interview would be timed. He used a stopwatch and limited the teacher’s response to three minutes for each question –- then interrupted, so the actual time for answers for the question was often less than three minutes. “I felt disrespected,” the teacher told her colleagues. “I don’t think they want to hire us.”

By the Board of Education’s own measures, this seems hard to justify. Despite the overcrowding, Gallistel is one of the CPS success stories. Student achievement has gone up, according to the data that supposedly drive CPS decision-making.

On the standardized NWEA test that is important enough to be a factor in whether students graduate, Gallistel was not only better than most CPS schools, but beat the national average in “Reading Growth,” reaching the 55th percentile in 2015. In “Math Growth,” for 2015 Gallistel was exactly at the national average (50th percentile). This test score data should be known to the CPS officials making hiring decisions – it is posted on the “2015 School Progress Report” on the CPS website.

Beyond test scores, the wishes of the community and the parents are also well known to those who are making the hiring decisions. Ald. Garza has spoken at Board of Education meetings, arguing for allowing Gallistel and Adams teachers to follow their students to the new Southeast Area Elementary School. Parents have gathered signatures on a petition asking for the same thing.

Update: After the union-sponsored meeting where the teacher complained about being disrespected by the interviewer, I have learned that some teachers have been called back for second interviews and think they are likely to be hired at Southeast Area Elementary. I have no knowledge of how many Gallistel and Addams teachers have been interviewed and how many have not, but on Monday, June 21, 2016, faculty members received the following email:

“Good Afternoon,

“I want to ensure that everyone who has applied to Southeast Elementary receives a request for an interview. To make certain this happens, I am requesting that you please email me at titaylor@cps.edu to let me know if you applied for a position at Southeast Elementary and have not received a request for an interview yet.

“Please let me know if you have any questions. “Thank you,

Tiffany Taylor

HR Generalist | School Support Center

Chicago Public Schools”

Nick Limbeck, a teacher and union delegate at Gallistel, said the parents, community, teachers and alderman have won a “partial victory.” He explained, “After packing neighborhood meetings and Board meetings,” they won “a real say in the selection of the new principal, and a guaranteed interview for any Gallistel or Addams teacher.”

Limbeck said the parents and teachers collected “hundreds of signatures” on a petition they presented to the Board in June 2015, with newly elected Ald. Sue Garza at their side. “Now the task is to make sure the new principal and the Board’s hand-picked transition team are reminded of what the community really wants,” Limbeck added.

The Board of Education finally did the right thing in opening a new school for the East Side. Will they do the right thing when they hire the faculty and staff who will work there?

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