Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for September 5, 2006 CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Principal fights overcrowding...and gets fired.

From the Washington Post...

Chicago Principal Loses Battle on Overcrowding City Won't Cap Enrollment for Struggling School

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer

CHICAGO -- Fed up with overcrowding at a Chicago public high school with too many problems and too little space, Principal Martin McGreal indulged a fantasy of overwhelmed school leaders everywhere: He declared enrollment closed.

McGreal gambled that Chicago school executives would stem the influx and spare the students at poorly performing Gage Park High School. He took a stand, McGreal later told parents, "because I would not compromise your children's educations."

School authorities responded by firing McGreal.

"We needed to get a principal in there who wasn't turning families away two weeks ahead of classes," said Mike Vaughn, spokesman for the Chicago public schools.

When the doors open Tuesday in the nation's third-largest school system, 200 to 300 more students will file through Gage Park's metal detectors than the building was designed to hold. Teachers will be asked to grade more papers. Parents will be asked to remain patient.

McGreal, 37, lost his battle and his $113,000 job, but he and his supporters hope the ruckus he raised will help rescue the most overcrowded schools in the troubled system.

In a struggle with echoes across the country, Chicago administrators responsible for 415,000 students acknowledge that they have been unable to keep up with shifting demographics or volatile local, state and federal tax equations.

Innovative projects and substantial investments inspired by Mayor Richard M. Daley (D), who set the pattern for a big-city mayor deeply involved in school policy, remain works in progress. Some schools are being shuttered as others are remade with an emphasis on size, independence and measurable results.

The projects are taking time. Meanwhile, some of the largest neighborhood schools, which are required to accept all students within their boundaries, have seen little reform as legions of children file through and filter into the world, often with severely limited skills.

At Gage Park High on the city's Southwest Side, half quit without a diploma.

"We have been set up to fail," history teacher, softball coach and union representative Susan Steinmiller declared at a community meeting last week in the school auditorium. Her five classes are each scheduled to average 35 students this year above the 28 to 30 set forth in the union contract.

"We need extra security. We need more teachers," said Steinmiller, who arrived in 1993 and considers Gage Park her second home. "That's what we need on Tuesday. Not next week. Not next month. Tuesday."

Librarian Kenneth Budz, who told the gathering of about several dozen parents and the neighborhood school council that the overcrowding is "incredibly wrong," said school authorities should have seen the influx coming and prepared. He admires McGreal's stand.

"I thought it was brave," Budz said. "He's got a conviction to do the best for children and teachers."

Gage Park's enrollment had been capped because of overcrowding, but the central authorities lifted the ceiling. Alarmed, McGreal froze enrollment in early August. The newly appointed principal offered suggestions for redirecting the overflow students and waited for his superiors to act.

They answered by proposing solutions that included a staggered schedule to expand the school day and accommodate more students. When McGreal balked, he was fired.

"I would not tolerate it for a second if my children were put in a school with over 1,750 students when the design capacity was 1,448," McGreal wrote to the community meeting. "I believe your children deserve the same respect."

Vaughn, the schools spokesman, said McGreal violated school board policy by turning away students: "We need the families to be greeted with open arms. They were being greeted by a cold shoulder."

Although enrollment is declining in the city as a whole, overcrowding has long been a problem in heavily Hispanic communities near Midway International Airport and the bulging Northwest Side.

Community leaders complain that the mayor and school leaders ignored the troubles even as they channeled cash and energy from the annual $5 billion operating and capital budgets elsewhere, particularly into "boutique" schools with limited enrollments.

"Believe me," Vaughn said of the overcrowding in the neighborhood schools, "we're frustrated about it, too."

Daley, a five-term Democrat who has impressed many an interviewer with his passion for fixing the public schools, earned a reputation for activism. In 1995, the Illinois legislature gave him control of the Chicago public school system, which he struggled to overhaul with a style that mixed personnel hardball and the closing of underperforming schools with fresh streams of money and ideas.

Two years ago, declaring that years of effort had barely changed the worst schools, Daley announced a program called Renaissance 2010 to remake more than 10 percent of Chicago's schools. The plan gives large roles to outsiders.

By 2010, one-third of the targeted group will be reborn as charter schools, one-third as small schools run by the district and one-third as independently operated contract schools.

In addition, as an average annual infusion of $100 million from the Illinois government dried up, Daley announced a $1 billion school construction program drawing heavily on special taxes. In the next six years, the city intends to build 15 elementary schools and nine high schools. Three other high schools will be renovated.

"Is it quick enough?" Vaughn asked. "No, but it's the best we can do given the lack of support we've gotten from Springfield."

One new high school is targeted for Gage Park, but it will not be ready for several years -- too late for the children of Jose Alejandro Garcia, who attend Gage Park High. As leader of the neighborhood council, he called last week's meeting in hopes McGreal's example would galvanize parents and school authorities.

Steinmiller, the history teacher, has little faith in the higher-ups, pointing to a nearby high school that is being overhauled to provide closer attention to a select group of students. She backed McGreal's choice, even as she hated to see him go.

"We needed his leadership. He had a real passion," said Steinmiller, who feels so strongly about Gage Park that her personal e-mail address incorporates the school's name. "But I'm glad he started the fight."