La Salle Language Academy is a magnet school in the middle of one of Chicago’s richest neighborhoods. The Mayor lives there.
It was one of the first magnet schools established as a result of the order to desegregate Chicago schools three decades ago.
La Salle is now slated for demagnetizing by the same Mayor who is shutting down schools primarily on the south and west side.
It will take a desegregated school and turn it mostly white.
“You’re dramatically going to alter the nature and the demographics of the school,” says Tom Brennan, parent of two children at LaSalle and co-chair of the local school council.
Brennan says the proposal would be a particular loss to families from neighborhoods without great schools. He said families come from as far away as 85th and Escanaba and the Montclare neighborhood to attend LaSalle.
“They will not have diversity, a strong academic tradition, and other cultural, positive things that are not available to them in their current local school area.”
Observers and even some CPS estimates show enrollment at high-performing Lincoln and LaSalle schools would become overwhelmingly white. An internal CPS document obtained by WBEZ shows the district estimates LaSalle could shift from its current racial makeup of 33 percent white students to 63 percent white students.
Let us hear CPS CEO J.C. Brizard tell us again how his vision of school reform is the Civil Rights issue of our time.
Fred Klonsky 
Fred,
As the title of your blog indicates, you are interested in looking at the data, so I wanted to share actual data with you on this issue.
CPS has considered a number of options for relieving overcrowding at Lincoln Elementary (that is the root issue). Of all of the options considered, the option proposed by CPS on December 13, the change in Lincoln boundaries & making LaSalle a neighborhood school is by far the best option for current residents of the Lincoln school district. Here are the basic facts:
1) There are ~1,200 seats available at Lincoln & LaSalle combined
2) There are ~940 K-8 CPS students currently living in the boundaries of Lincoln & LaSalle
Given there is excess capacity in the neighborhood, CPS will not invest $ to add capacity in the neighborhood. Given the dire financial situation for CPS, low cost options are in high demand. The lowest cost option in this case is to make LaSalle a neighborhood school. CPS will invest in capacity in other parts of the city, on the SW side & NW side for example where there are many more kids than available seats in schools.
Given these constraints, the proposed boundary change is very clearly the best of available options. This proposal is least disruptive for current students at both schools and for families that are heavily invested in the Lincoln/LaSalle area neighborhood. Other proposals considered by CPS would be much more disruptive, expensive, or both.
I think we all want CPS to have a combination of high performing magnet & neighborhood schools, this proposal does both by replicating the neighborhood success of Lincoln at LaSalle & by expanding magnet options at LaSalle II to compensate for the magnet reduction at LaSalle. In the current situation, with only 30 lottery spots available to applicants to LaSalle each year and a selection rate of ~3%, LaSalle is already an option that is only available to a very, very small number of randomly selected CPS parents. Those slots will continue to be available at LaSalle II – so this option is not really being taken away from parents seeking a better school option for their kids through the magnet lottery.
My wife and I who have lived within the Lincoln/LaSalle boundaries for over 10 years very deliberately purchased our home so that our child could be assured a seat in Lincoln school. With the proposed boundary change, our child can attend LaSalle when he is school aged in a few years – which is and will continue to be a great school. We live a short walk from LaSalle, it is closer to our home that Lincoln.
We are not rich. We both work very hard to afford to live in the area. This proposal avoids us taking a major financial hit from a drop in our property value that would result if we were assigned to a school that was not comparable to Lincoln.
Additional fact: Desks that were made available to minority students by court ordered desegregation at La Salle will now go to neighborhood white children. La Salle II is a different school located in an entirely different neighborhood with an entirely different admission process. How you can say this is not a net loss of slots for non-neighborhood non-white children is a mystery to me.
Based on the websites for La Salle & La Salle II, the lottery application process is the same for non-neighborhood students at LaSalle & LaSalle II. 30 lottery slots = 30 lottery slots, right?
Yes, La Salle II is in a different neighborhood, but it’s mission is the same.
La Salle will continue to be an integrated school with ~60% white students. It would be great if Chicago was not a segregated city. We have history to thank for the reality that we live in vibrant, engaging, yet segregated city. In the segregated city that we live in, 60:40 white:minority is much more integrated than many, many other schools.
In the spirit of finding solutions, what is your proposed solution to over crowding at Lincoln school?
Arguing against this CPS proposal does not address the root over crowding issue at hand today. In the current financial environment, this CPS proposal solves Lincoln school over crowding without capitol improvement $. If there are better solutions that don’t involve capital $, I’m all ears.
I’m afraid our math and our view of equity are different.
I count a net loss of seats for minority children at La Salle. Enrollment will go from 30% white to 60% white. Where will those minority children go? You say to another school. But those numbers don’t represent status quo in terms of total numbers of seats for minority children.
As for solutions that don’t involve capital expenditures. There are none. CPS must get more funding: By a return of TIF money. From increases in taxation, particularly corporate taxes and by the state meeting the constitutional requirement to fund the state’s schools at 50%.
But I appreciate you reading my blog.
Mark, according to LaSalle Language Academy’s website, the school has enrollment of 571 students. Terminating the magnet program at LLA will result in a loss of 571 magnet school seats, not 30. I’m not sure what math you are doing to suggest only 30 seats will be lost. LLA enrolls approx 70 new students a year, not 30. Repeat: +/-70 slots for +/-70 students, not 30! Please, discuss the facts, not fiction. You have totally ignored the potential solutions provided by adjacent/nearby schools with immediate capacity to handle Lincoln overcrowding: Alcott, Agassi & Newberry. Why are you not discussing these option that do not disrupt the successful program at LLA, a program serving students of all races and socioeconomic status from across Chicago?
You indicate that current CPS admission policy granted enrollment into LLA to approx 3% of the 1300 who applied. I believe the correct numbers to be about 72 accepted. That’s nearly 6%.
If 1300 people from all over Chicago could apply to Lincoln, how many of those students would Lincoln accept? Pretty much none, right? So that makes Lincoln an option that is available to an even more-limited group of parents relative to LLA; only those who live in the Lincoln neighborhood. Who ever promised you you’d get a top-tier school in your back yard? Lot’s of families choose to move to the suburbs to get that. More families don’t even have an acceptable school in their back yard let alone a top-tier school. That is why magnate schools like LaSalle are so important. And you want to close it? You’ve got Lincoln. Let others have LaSalle.
Btw, has someone told you that your children cannot attend Lincoln? I believe it’s your right to attend by living in the boundaries as they are drawn today. If Lincoln cannot accommodate neighborhood students, then why doesn’t Lincoln terminate its own IB program that includes dozens of students from OUTSIDE the Lincoln boundary? Or the French School program that utilizes Lincoln School facilities? Fixing Lincoln’s problems at the expense of LLA students and community is a horrible idea and precedent.
Suggesting that increasing enrollment at LaSalle II by 30 chairs shall provide compensation for shuttering the magnet program at LLA is ridiculous. If LaSalle II has capacity to increase its enrollment, then it should simply do so and expand it’s offerings to additional families and students. In fact, you might want to consider applying to LaSalle II since you’re so keen on the place. Or is it more that you want your kid to go to LLA, which, by the way, won’t really be LLA anymore if you homogenize the student body and terminate the school-defining World Language Program. As I understand, if it’s not a magnet school, there will be no funds to support a World Language Program. Or work to get your kid into Decatur, because everyone deserves the best.
Fred, thank you for the forum.
The mayor lives neither in the Lincoln school boundaries, nor the proposed LaSalle boundaries. He doesn’t even live in Lincoln Park (Ravenswood, while also on the north side is actually a different neighborhood). And while I would be happy to hear that he is personally helping make CPS decisions, I very much doubt that it’s true.
Do you really need to lie to add salaciousness to your story, or are you honestly that bad at getting basic facts right?
I do not feel the need to lie to add salaciousness to my stories. They require no sexual content at all, and I rarely write about sex. Although, I might consider it. And Rahm, the next time you comment on this blog, no need to be anomymous (sic). And don’t be so modest. Claiming you don’t personally make CPS decisions! LMAO.
You didn’t answer to the fact that the Mayor doesn’t live in Lincoln Park…he lives in Ravenswood. Neither LaSalle, nor Lincoln are his local schools…so the hook of your story is false…even though the underlying story about student displacement might be correct.
You’ve been gone so long, I thought you moved to the suburbs. You are right. The Mayor lives on a lovely block of Ravenswood. I know this because we marched in front of it a few weeks ago. I don’t agree about the hook of the story. The hook was that the CPS board was turning an diverse school, the oldest magnet school in the city, into a mostly white one. That’s not the underlying story. That is the story. But you will focus on the story that makes you feel more comfortable. I will focus on the injustice that should make you uncomfortable.