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De la Cruz was never 'underenrolled' anyway... The big truth behind the closing of one of Chicago’s smallest public schools

Nicole Cohen - August 28, 2009

[Editor's Note: The following article was written to be published in June 2009, but was not. It was not submitted to Substance or SubstanceNews until August 28, 2009, so we are publishing it in our queue. Article by Nicole Cohen, June 2, 2009].

Chicago's De la Cruz Middle School building the week after the final day of public school classes were held in the building. The photograph above was taken on June 19, 2009, following the stripping of the building by principals from other schools across the city's southwest side. As reported in June 2009 by De la Cruz teacher Kristine Mayle, principals were told to go through the classrooms of De la Cruz while school was still in session and mark books, equipment and supplies with post-it notes so that the materials could be taken to other schools. The school was closed based on the claim — refuted in the accompanying article — that it was "underutilized." "Underutilization" is one of three major Orwellian locations that the administrations of Arne Duncan and Ron Huberman have used so that public school buildings could be privatized under Mayor Daley's "Renaissance 2010" program. Within two months after the building above was closed as a regular public school, CPS officials discovered an "emergency" that required the building be turned over the the UNO charter schools at a rental of $1 per year. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.The bulletin board in the lobby of Chicago’s De La Cruz Academy is a snapshot of the public middle school’s achievements. A 2009 certificate of recognition from the school system. A 2006 grant from the Chicago Foundation for Education. A 2008 award given by the State Board of Education to low-income schools with high academic performance.

The same year De La Cruz won statewide recognition, the school system slated it for closure, citing under enrollment. But De La Cruz was never under enrolled. Officials also gave other reasons for closure – a building in need of repairs, availability of nearby schools and the fact that De La Cruz is one of the smallest schools in the district – but this investigation found all but one to be unsubstantiated.

With a capacity for 300 students, De La Cruz is a small school.

On February 15, 2008, the Chicago Board of Education held a 'hearing' on the proposed closing of De la Cruz at the Board's headquarters at 125 S. Clark St. A month earlier, the school had learned that CEO Arne Duncan had proposed that De la Cruz be closed because it was allegedly "underutilized." The Board chambers were filled on the night of February 15, 2008, when De la Cruz principal Katherine Konopasak (above at podium speaking) presented the case for keeping the school open. In the photo above, Konopasak is accompanied by teachers, parents, and students from De la Cruz who are displaying some of the honors the school had won. Unknown to those who thought the hearing would be fair and balanced, not one member of the Chicago Board of Education was present, the hearing officer was politically connected to the Board, the data used against De la Cruz was rigged, and the "Board" members supposedly there to listen to the testimony were actually low level bureaucrats who were ordered to sit in the prestige seats so that the public thought it was talking to the actual members of the Board of Education who voted later that month to ratify Duncan's recommendation that De la Cruz be closed. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.“If you just look at it in terms of warehousing kids, small schools are more expensive to operate,” says Michael Klonsky of Chicago’s Small Schools Workshop, a small school advocacy organization.

But with higher success rates than large schools, Klonsky says that in the long-term “the benefits of small schools outweigh the extra cost.”

Klonsky believes the type of school closure seen at De La Cruz is a result of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s business approach to education. The mayor’s appointment of former Chicago Transit Authority President Ron Huberman to head the school system, serves as an example.

“Huberman is not an educator,” Klonsky says. “He manages things.” In Klonsky’s eyes, Huberman’s approach during the economic crisis consists of “budget cutting and chopping heads.”

While hundreds of people protested downstairs and were blocked by Chicago Police and Board of Education security from entering the Board headquarters for the meeting on February 27, 2008, then Chicago schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan (above right, at podium) held a press conference in the sixth floor theater the Board uses for media events. Dubbed Duncan's "Potemkin Village" by some of the remaining reporters who cover Chicago school news regularly, the room features a stage set (visible above) with a Chicago skyline background. The event took place an hour before the meeting of the Chicago Board of Education at which the fate of De la Cruz and a dozen other schools would be decided. At the press conference above, Duncan announced that the Chicago Board of Education was about to approve a new policy of "turnaround" for what he called "underperforming" schools. Accompanied, as usual, with an array of people meant to convey to the media images that Duncan had the support of the community, Duncan read from his prepared script about how so-called "turnaround" had succeeded in one Chicago school, when the opposite was the truth. Each of the individuals above played a role in the massive closing of Chicago public schools and their "turnaround" of the charterization of their buildings. Some by 2009 had been featured in national news reports as Duncan, now U.S. Secretary of Education, is trying to force every state in the USA to adopt the same educationally bankrupt policies using the same rigged data sets and the same false claims. Substance photograph by George N. Schmidt.That may be the root of how De La Cruz ended up on the closing list.

Crunching numbers

According to Chicago Board of Education policy, one of the first school closure considerations is “space utilization level,” a figure that uses enrollment to measure how much of a school’s capacity is being used.

But this measurement isn’t always perfect. In the case of De La Cruz, the system’s measurement included a stage and open assembly hall meant to hold 30 students – a nave from the building’s former resident.

James Dispensa, who is in charge of providing measurement numbers to the board, concedes that including the nave was a mistake.

“Once in a while you’re going to find a space that one could argue was never really designed to be used as a classroom,” Dispensa says. “This was one of them.”

As a result, school officials said De La Cruz was running at 61 percent capacity when it was really at 68 percent. Even so, neither number falls into the policy’s definition of under enrollment (less than 50 percent capacity).

“There are so many flaws with this basic method,” says education researcher Donald Moore of Designs for Change, a Chicago-based education advocacy group. “The whole notion that you’re going to make such important decisions … without going out and looking at how space is being used is just ludicrous,” Moore says.

Dispensa says his team only visits about a dozen schools a year, mostly relying on in-house data for its numbers.

Building repairs

In a statement read at a public hearing, Dispensa testified that De La Cruz was in need of renovations to the roof, masonry and windows. At that same hearing Roy Pletsch, principal of De La Cruz for 12 years before leaving in 2007, testified that the building had received roof repairs and new windows, which the school system confirms occurred in 2005.

“They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that building,” Pletsch says.

Still, facility improvements were only briefly noted in the report that resulted from the public hearing.

The chart above, which was displayed on the overhead screens at the Chicago Board of Education at the time of the hearing to determine the fate of De la Cruz, was later admitted to be inaccurate by CPS officials. During the years Arne Duncan served as CEO of CPS, most of the data utilized to make the case for closing schools was similarly rigged. Since the officials creating the charts, the "independent hearing officer" presiding over the cynical events that helped set the fate of more than 50 public schools between 2005 and 2009, and the members of the "Board of Education" who sat at the hearings were all being stage managed to produce an outcome that didn't depend on facts, but on power, the fate of the schools was always the same. Now that Duncan is U.S. Secretary of Education, the lies that began in Chicago have become the stuff of national mythology, with The New York Times reporting, for example, that Duncan showed courage by closing 60 "failing schools" and claiming that "turnaround" is a success and therefore a model for the USA. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. ‘This is a pattern where the board has invested in a school and then a couple years later [they are] closing it,” Moore says.

He sees similarities between De La Cruz and Andersen and Carpenter Elementary, two public elementary schools in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood.

According to Moore, the board had invested in special education programs at both Andersen and Carpenter. In the case of Carpenter, a University of Illinois at Chicago study reported that the school system had spent millions of dollars making the building accessible for students with disabilities.

When working class parents arrive at the Chicago Board of Education for the hearings on school closings, they are led to believe that they are speaking with members of the Board of Education. But during the years that the administration of Arne Duncan was closing schools by the dozen each year, not one member of the Chicago Board of Education ever attended one of the hearings. Nor did they read the often heart-rending transcripts of materials prepared by teachers, parents, students, principals and others in defense of their schools and their dignity. It was only after Duncan had gone to Washington and their behavior became more public knowledge that a couple of the members of the Board attended a few of the 22 hearings held in January and February 2009 (the year after De la Cruz was voted to close). Part of how Duncan stage managed the events was to order mid-level bureaucrats to sit on the "Board of Education" side of the railing during the hearings. Usually, parents and teachers would talk to these anonymous actors, not knowing that they were not the "Board." Above, some of the officials who sat as the "Board" on February 15, 2008, for the hearing that set the fate of De la Cruz. During the four years of hearings covered regularly by Substance, the "Board" members were not even identified by name (see the signs above) since their job was to sit there (and try not to fall asleep) as part of the hoax being played on the victims of Duncan's school closing policies. Often the did fall asleep. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Despite board investments, both schools have been slated for closure.

Where do the students go?

Dispensa says the board also considered capacity numbers of nearby Whittier Elementary (66 percent) to determine the school’s ability to take more students. Dispensa supported the consolidation of the two schools because it meant one school would have more students rather than two schools with less.

The difference is that the more students, the less space a school has for alternative classrooms like computer labs and art studios. “They don’t allow in their calculations for the kinds of spaces that most of us would deem essential for an adequate education,” Moore says.

The little guy

With 183 students and the ability to serve 300, De La Cruz is one of the smallest schools in the district.

“It is clearly established through research that small schools are beneficial especially for low-income students,” Moore says.

About 90 percent of De La Cruz students are considered low-income, according to the school system’s Web site.

Chicago always made certain that the stage was managed with a sensitive eye towards diversity. Hearings that determined the fate of Hispanic schools such as De la Cruz were presided over by hearing officers who had Hispanic last names, such as Respicio Vazquez (above) who presided over the February 15, 2008 hearing to determine the fate of De la Cruz. At the beginning of each hearing, the hearing officer reads from a script in which he states that he is an "independent hearing officer" and not an employee of the Chicago Board of Education. Most of the hearing officers, however, are far from independent. Vazquez, who has presided over more than 20 hearings since 2006 and who has never recommended against the wishes of the CEO, is a partner in the law firm that does labor negotiations for the Chicago Board of Education (Franczek Sullivan in 2008 at the time of the De la Cruz hearings). In both 2008 and 2009, Vazquez's law firm billed the Chicago Board of Education for more than $500,000 worth of work, which the Board paid in full. After Arne Duncan was appointed U.S. Secretary of Education, one of the people he hired to work at the U.S. Department of Education was former Franczek Sullivan partner Charlie Rose, who had negotiated union contracts for the public schools for more than a decade. During the February 15, 2008, hearing, Vazquez threatened to remove one teacher who complained that the translations were not being done properly for the large audience. The audience for the De la Cruz hearing was more than 100 teachers, parents, children, and supporters — and included a significant number of people who could not speak or understand English. Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt. The Web site also acknowledges that small schools – up to 350 students for elementary schools – are more conducive to discussions between teachers, parents and students.

Leticia Martinez has seen three of her children come through De La Cruz and has felt the benefits of a small school environment. She remembers the frequent calls she received from English teacher Noreen Bubalo who would update Martinez on her children’s progress.

“They would translate for me because I don’t speak very much English,” she says in Spanish. “I liked that she did that because in reality you don’t know much about what the children do in school.”

Moore says one of the system’s problems is the lack of a comprehensive school facilities policy. The policy would outline procedures for where to build schools and how and why to close them.

But that’s about to change.

The Illinois General Assembly recently passed a bill that would form a team of experts to draft a comprehensive facilities policy for the Chicago public school system. The policy would address criteria for school closings, openings, phase-outs, and consolidations.

“They could look at the actual educational use being done with this space,” Moore says. “They could also define what an educationally adequate program requires.” “Who would want to send their kids to a school that has no science labs, no art room, no computer labs?” he says.

But the legislation comes too late to save De La Cruz, which will be graduating its last class of eighth-graders on June 8.

Wearing the same red tie he had sported at his morning press conference to keep reporters away from the massive protests taking place downstairs and outside his offices at 125 S. Clark St. in Chicago, then Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan returned to the Board chambers late in the afternoon of February 27, 2008, for the vote of the Board of Education in favor of his 2008 'Hit List' of schools to be closed, turnarounded, phased out, or otherwise terminated. As usual, the vote of the Board of Education was unanimous in favor of Duncan's recommendations. What the public did not know at the time of the vote was that neither Duncan nor any of the seven members of the Board of Education had read the transcripts of the "hearings" on the terminations Duncan had proposed. The stenographic transcripts of the hearings had not even been completed at the the Board was voting (above), and neither Duncan nor the Board members had attended one of the hearings. The thousands of pages of materials — ranging from letters and petitions signed by children as young as five years old to legal briefs written by veteran Chicago lawyers — were not even assembled to be considered by Duncan or the Board. As one critic had said when the 2008 Hit List was announced a month earlier — in was, Chicago style, a "Done Deal." Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt. Standing in her office, De La Cruz Principle Katherine Konopasek’s eyes brim with tears when she discovers that her school was never actually under enrolled. This is news to her.

“Here we have all of these successful things and you’re closing us anyway,” she says.

“Why did they let the bureaucracy get in the way?” 

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