Statement of Maria Hernandez

8/8/2019 Statement of Maria Hernandez

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Statement by Maria Hernandez

Parent Leader and Former Local School Council ChairCarpenter Elementary School

2150 W. ErieChicago, Illinois

Today, representatives of active parents from Carpenter Elementary

School and Andersen Elementary School in West Town are presenting written

evidence to the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, gathered in

documenting the federal discrimination complaint that was filed by Carpenter

parents, Andersen parents, and Designs for Change with the federal

government, based on discrimination against students because of their race and

color, national origin, and disability status.

Carpenter Elementary School in West Town is being "phased out" by a

Chicago School Board decision first made in February 2009, which violated the

Board's own policy about the definition of an "underutilized" school. Carpenter is

being phased out as part of the Renaissance 2010 plan. When Mayor Daley

announced Ren 10, he said that Ren 10 was going to involve closing "Chicago's

worst schools," the schools that had "consistently underperformed," so these

schools could "start over."

At Carpenter and Andersen, the Mayor's School Board completely

changed direction and began the process of closing two of Chicago's very best

schools. When Carpenter was closed, we served students who were 94% Latino

and African American, 95% low-income, and 26% disabled. Yet during the past

decade, our students have approached and exceeded the Chicago average on

the state ISAT Tests. In spring 2009, just a few months after the Board's official

decision to phase Carpenter out, 72% of our students met or exceeded state teststandards. We also met federal standards for "adequate yearly progress;"

Carpenter was one of a handful of schools to reach this high level of

achievement that serves over 90% low-income students and is a neighborhood

school.


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In spring 2009, Carpenter scored 22 percentile points higher than Harvard

Elementary School, the highest-scoring of the lavishly funded Chicago turn-

around schools, although Carpenter and Andersen have, as you can see,

succeeded despite extreme hostility from the Mayor and Chicago Board

committed to shutting us down.

Beyond our test scores, Carpenter has been noted for three things:

First, our school is the center of neighborhood life that holds ourneighborhood together. Two and three generations of families haveattended Carpenter. If you spend time at Carpenter, you will repeatedlyhear the word "family," since Carpenter has been a large family ofteachers, parents, community members, students, and elected officialsafamily that the Chicago Board is committed to destroy. The Mayor doesn't

want neighborhoods with a large percentage of low-income people inWest Town and other communities surrounding the downtown. He wantsWest Town to be a bedroom community for affluent people who work inthe downtown.

Mayor Daley knows that since Carpenter (as well as Andersen) are thehearts of our neighborhoods, if he cuts the heart out, the body will die.

Second, Carpenter has been known for our outstanding Fine andPerforming Arts Program, with dance, vocal and orchestral music, andvisual art. We have had many famous partners, like Joffrey Ballet. Thedrastic limitations in the space available to carry out these artisticactivities, which I am about to describe, has destroyed this outstandingarts program in one year, which took ten years to create. Ogden HighSchool has taken away our vocal music room, art room, and dance studio,and made us combine orchestral music and our computer lab in one room.Without these facilities, it has been impossible to continue our Fine andPerforming Arts Program effectively.

Third, we are recognized for our high quality special education programs,especially for hard-of hearing students, in which $6 million in specialfacilities has been invested (for example, for special sound-absorbingmaterials) . The program for our hard-of-hearing students, for whichpeople would transport their children from a wide range of neighborhoodsin the city, is now a shadow of what it used to be. We have lost staff. AndOgden High School has broken the law by refusing to serve older hard-of-hearing students and demanding that we educate them.


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In our special education programs, we have also been recognized foreducating children with disabilities to the maximum extent possible in theregular classroom.

One special high point that drew together many of our strengths took

place shortly before we were officially phased out by the Board. We held a

bilingual performance of a musical version of Cinderella, with students with

disabilities playing some of the key singing parts.

We were closed for "underutilization" allegedly we had too many empty

classrooms. However, the floor plan of our school as it was used in the 2008-

2009 school year (Attachment A-1 and A-2), reflects the presence of students

from an over-crowded Ogden school, and our 26% of students with disabilities

(many of them severe) requires that a number of our special education classeshave eight of fewer students in them, which was not taken into account when the

Board calculated our space capacity.

The school system has done its best to cut Carpenter's enrollment, by

reducing the size of our attendance area in November 2008 and earlier (see

Attachment B).

In the summary of evidence we are submitting to the committee, we

document that the official school board policy under which we were closed says

in Attachment C that "significant underutilization" means that less than 30% of a

school's classrooms are being used for regular instruction (not counting vocal

and orchestral music rooms, dance studios, art rooms, and computer

labswhich are the very resources that help account for our success. Even

when we calculated our capacity using the Board's rules, it came up to about

51%.

Yet, the Board's "demographer" James Dispensa, disregarded the Board's

straight-forward rule and claimed that Carpenter and Andersen should meet theutilization standard of 50% to stay open, while, he claimed, our space utilization

was only 23%. Respicio Vazquez, an "independent hearing officer" appointed by

the school system's law department who turned out to be a major partner in a law

firm that had received over $4 million from the Board from January 2001 to the


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time of our hearing date, presided over both the Carpenter and Andersen

hearings and helped railroad the closing of our academically successful school.

By failing to read the underlined passage on page 1 of the 2-page School

Boundary change policy that was the Board's official policy under which

Carpenter and Andersen were closed (see Attachment C). Mr. Vazquez shows

what the concept of independence really means in Chicago.

Tragically, a completely empty high school sits much closer to Ogden than

Carpenter (Near North High School), which is also shown in Attachment B.. It

was used for one year by Jones College Prep when major construction was

carried out at Jones. At much less cost, the Mayor could turn Near North into a

high school for Ogden, but he would lose the chance to drive our low-income

neighborhood out of West Town. As a young demonstrator at our closing

hearing told us, Real estate greed is taking our school from us."

Attachments A-3 and A-4 shows how our school (which never should have

been closed) was divided up for the 2009-10 school yea, The symbols of 23

single skulls show that Carpenter lost 23 classrooms or student resource

rooms. in just one year, Carpenter had only eight classrooms left (a loss of 74%

of our classrooms), compared with the previous year. But of the eight

classrooms left, we were forced to use five of them for two purposes. In three

classrooms, two classes (most of them for students with disabilities) were taught

in one room. For five groups of special education students, we were required to

break the law, on the orders of the school system. For two additional classrooms

and the library, we were also forced to use these rooms for two purposes, but in

a different way so that, for example, instrumental music and computers could

only be taught half-time in their single shared room.

Working under these horrible conditions and the continuing loss of grade

levels drives away students and teachers, and the school system that caused

these problems then cynically argues that we need still less space. We are

about to face a new school year in which even more reductions in our space will

be made, and we have been told that we will soon be shut down.


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However, we are fighting back hard, with parents, school's staff, and

elected officials working together, to support our discrimination complain and to

support the work of the Facilities Task Force

We have the deepest respect for Representative Soto for leading the fight

to pass the legislation that created the Facilities Task Force and to the members

who are devoting so much time to make it work.

Please, let's work together to pass additional laws that will save Carpenter

and Andersen and will make it unnecessary for other schools to live out this

nightmare. One key lesson of our experience in improving Carpenter and

Andersen is that parents, teachers, principals, community, and elected officials

must stand up and fight together.

Maria [email protected]

773-648-3117


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Documents

Statement of Maria Hernandez