Parents occupy Chicago school

[kas125]

DOZENS OF parents, children and community supporters are occupying a field house at the Whittier Dual Language School in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood to stop it from being demolished. The occupation started on September 15 and has continued for nearly a week despite several attempts by Chicago police to break up the protest.

The parents want the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system and its CEO Ron Huberman to stop plans to demolish the field house and build a soccer field--and instead agree to let parents renovate the building so it can become a library (there is no library at Whittier currently) and meeting center.

As one mother, whose children have attended Whittier for the past eight years, said: "This is not private property. This is our property--we pay taxes, we pay for this. It's not about what they want to do with it--it's about what we want to do with it. Imagine our kids not having a library."

read the rest at: http://socialistworker.org/2010/09/21/parents-occupy-chicago-school

[realisticphish]

1. awesome

if futile, unfortunately. However, if they can get enough media attention, then the school district wouldn't dare do what I assume they would, which is "agree" to listen, then tear it down anyway as soon as they can

[kas125]

2. I hope they do get lots of media attention. It's just unfathomable

to me that those people want to spend $354,000 to demolish a building and then who knows how much more to build the soccer field when they don't even have a library. That they can ignore the parents and the taxpayers and use the police to intimidate them is disgusting.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. It's the current fad

Parents are completely ignored in every deform er I mean reform proposal.

What we have is a bunch of very wealthy men throwing money at charters and telling us that our traditional public schools, especially the ones in urban areas, are broken.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Are they still there?

I posted an article about this a few days ago. Meant to go back and check to see what was going on.

Thanks for posting.

[dkf]

5. How much do books cost? Is there supposed to be a librarian?

If you don't have ongoing funding for those things does a library make sense?