CCH participated in this march, organized by the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.
By Curtis Black
Two actions protested the closing of Overton Elementary in Bronzeville today — a morning rally highlighting safety issues (and much more), and an afternoon action, which raised larger issues of resources by drawing the connection to a Walmart being built nearby with TIF funds.
About a hundred parents marched from Overton, at 49th and Indiana, to Mollison, at 44th and King — past four gangs and four drug locations, according to Francis Newman, a parent from Williams Prep, which is also on the school closing list.
The walk also took them past the spot where Columbia College student Kevin Ambrose was shot and killed last week, she noted.
“We’re demanding these schools be kept open and that they get the resources they need,” Newman said. She said she recently visited Disney Magnet school, which has numerous computers, smart boards, and iPads for children. “In our school, we can’t get a computer that works,” she said.
The real status-quo
The idea that “schools are under-resourced because they’re underutilized is a lie that is used to validate the status quo,” said Jeanette Taylor, an LSC member at Mollison and a leader with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. “The status quo in Chicago is closing schools.”
Several parents discussed schools that had struggled after repeatedly receiving students from closing schools and are still being subject to school actions.
A hearing officer has recommended keeping Overton open, challenging CPS’s assertion that Mollison is a higher-performing school, which is based on its highly technical system of performance points.
“Closing this school to bring children from Overton to Mollison doesn’t sound like education reform it me, is sounds like sabotage,” Taylor said.
Overton parent Darlene Johnson said she served as a Safe Passage worker at Dyett High School last year. “A boy walked past us, turned the corner, and was shot,” she said.
She also raised the issue of budget priorities: “We say no money to McCormick Place for a DePaul arena, no TIF money for Wal-Mart — and why does that rich lady that used to be on the school board need all that TIF money?” She was referring to Penny Pritzker.
Wal-Mart connections
That was also the theme of an afternoon rally that started at the school and ended at the site of a new Wal-Mart at 47th and King Drive, featuring Wal-Mart workers from OUR Wal-Mart and Warehouse Workers for Justice, along with theChicago Teachers Union and Chicago Jobs With Justice.
The Walmart development on 47th is being subsidized with $13 million in TIF money, on top of an $11 million TIF subsidy for a new Walmart in Pullman, organizers said. On top of that, the Walton family foundation gave close to a half-million dollars to finance CPS’s school closing “community engagement” (including advertising).
Walmart’s owners have also given $22 million to charters in Chicago — their largest investment in charters in the nation — organizers said.
The world’s largest employer — and the nation’s wealthiest family — “can afford to build their own store without our tax dollars,” said Susan Hurley of JWJ. “That money should be going to our schools. We could save a lot of schools with $24 million.
“And they need to do a lot better by their workers before they start telling us how to run our schools.”
“Why does Walmart and the Walton Family, who don’t live in Chicago, have more say about our schools than the people who send their children there?” asked Kristine Mayle of CTU. “It’s because they have the same agenda as the mayor, which is … to privatize them.”