Months of argument and anguish over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push for sweeping school closings came to a climax Wednesday as his hand-picked Board of Education voted to shut 49 elementary schools and transfer thousands of children to new classroom settings.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett withdrew her recommendation to close four other schools at the last minute as it became clear some board members would fight to save them.

But the board gave a ringing endorsement to Emanuel's vision for a downsized school system, which he argues will help combat a massive budget deficit and allow the district to distribute scarce resources more efficiently.

See the list of schools closed or saved here

Critics were unconvinced, and many forcefully expressed objections during and after Wednesday's board meeting. Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, one of several City Council members who spoke on behalf of schools in their wards, argued that schools serve as the glue of many neighborhoods.

"Closing a school is akin to closing a community," Pawar said.

But Byrd-Bennett, in urging a vote for the administration's proposal, said that doing nothing to address underused and poorly performing schools was harmful to children.

"We can no longer embrace the status quo because the status quo is not working for all Chicago schoolchildren," Byrd-Bennett said. "It is imperative that you take the difficult decision but essential steps."

The board voted 6-0 to back Emanuel on closing 48 elementary schools and one high school program. The vote to close Von Humboldt Elementary was broken out, and passed 4-2.

The board's solid support for the long, controversial slate of closings came as little surprise to his critics, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, which last week filed two federal lawsuits seeking to block the district from following through on its plan.

CTU President Karen Lewis said the union was still hoping courts would intervene to keep schools open but vowed to leverage voter anger over closings to block the re-election of Emanuel, who has said he was prepared to take a political hit for the closings.

"Well, he will," Lewis declared. "I'm glad he's prepared."

Emanuel held no public events Wednesday, but his office released a statement after the vote in which he acknowledged closings were "incredibly difficult" but added, "I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future."

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A group of 15 principals from across the city announced this week they will no longer be using results from a controversial new state test as part of their middle and high school admissions criteria.

In a letter to parents, students and school communities, the principals — from Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx — explained their dissatisfaction with the Common Core, which they said did not live up to their expectations.

"Inauthentic tests and test prep are taking away time for quality instruction and authentic learning and testing," the letter stated.

The principals wanted to send a political message and take action, said Mark Federman, one of the signatories and principal of East Side Community High School. They also hope to start a conversation across the city and with New York State Education Commissioner John King, he said...

The signatories on the letter, which was dated May 21 with copies sent to the DOE and the New York State Education Department, are:


BRONX
Rex Bobbish, Principal of The Cinema School
Ramon Gonzalez, Principal of The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology

BROOKLYN
Kourtney Boyd, Principal of The School for the Urban Environment
Taeko Onishi, Principal of Lyons Community School
John O'Reilly, Principal of Arts & Letters

MANHATTAN
Sonhando Estwick, Principal of Tompkins Square Middle School
Mark Federman, Principal of East Side Community School
Rosemarie Gaetani, Principal of Simon Baruch Middle School
Stacy Goldstein, Principal of School of the Future Middle School
Peter Karp, Principal of Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE)
Herb Mack, Principal of Urban Academy Laboratory High School
Kelly McGuire, Principal of Lower Manhattan Middle School
George Morgan, Principal of Technology, Arts and Science Studio (TASS) Middle School
Lisa Nelson, Principal of Isaac Newton Middle School
Jeanne Rotunda, Principal of West Side Collaborative Middle School


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The big clock in Dowan McNair-Lee's 8th grade classroom is silent, but she can hear the minutes ticking away nonetheless. On this day, like any other, the clock is a constant reminder of how little time she has to prepare her students—for spring tests, and for high school and all that lies beyond it.

As an English/language arts teacher in the common-core era, Ms. McNair-Lee is part of a massive nationwide push to turn millions of students into powerful readers and writers.

The District of Columbia, where she's taught for 11 years, was quick to adopt the Common Core State Standards. But putting them into practice demands a heavy lift: With their emphasis on mastery of complex text, the standards require far stronger literacy skills than most students here—and many in the 46 states that also adopted the common core in English—currently possess.

Serving mostly disadvantaged children, the school system in the nation's capital faces an especially steep climb as it implements the new standards.

"Every day when they come to class, there is so much they don't know," Ms. McNair-Lee said one day last winter. "Every day, I'm trying to fill in those gaps. Some days I feel like I just can't do enough."

Mikel Robinson is one of the students she is trying to support. The 14-year-old has had an uneven year in her class. His work shows promise, but too many assignments are incomplete or missing; he bombs too many tests. Ms. McNair-Lee watches over Mikel as much as she can with 128 students revolving through her day. But she agonizes about him as his teetering grades hover just at the edge of her reach.

How well the school district can reach Mikel is an open question as it brings the common standards into the classroom. And it's one that resonates nationwide, where students like Mikel sit at millions of desks in schools that are trying to do the same.

In districts of all sizes, teachers are scrambling to get their arms around the new guidelines. The demand for good curricular resources and professional development outstrips their availability.

The response here to those dynamics has been to bet big on the common standards, with a full-bore K-12 English/language arts implementation that features some of the most leading-edge instructional resources and far-reaching professional development in the nation, experts say.

"The district has done this more comprehensively than most places in the country," says Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which analyzed the district's emerging common-core program. "DCPS is in full tilt, whole-hog."

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Success Academy is aiming to open its first high school next year in a Murray Hill building that currently houses four other schools, according to Department of Education documents.

The controversial charter school chain, which runs 14 elementary and middle schools in Manhattan, The Bronx and Brooklyn, has applied to replace the Department of Education’s Norman Thomas High School on East 33rd Street, which is being phased out in June 2014 after years of poor performance reviews.

The charter school would open in the fall of 2014.

If approved by the DOE's Panel for Education Policy next month, the Murray Hill Success branch would ultimately serve 676 to 864 students in grades 9 through 12, though it would start with just 63 to 81 students in grades 8 and 9 in the fall of 2014, according to documents.

The school would serve graduates of Success' existing Harlem schools.

The new Success high school would join three public schools still in the building, according to DOE documents: the Unity Center for Urban Technologies; the Manhattan Academy for Arts and Languages; and the Murray Hill Academy.

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More than 1,560 homerooms in Chicago public elementary schools are over the school district’s class size limits, according to numbers obtained by WBEZ and Catalyst Chicago Magazine from Chicago Public Schools. The revelation comes as Chicago is proposing to shut down a historic 53 grammar schools. Activists have raised repeated concerns that the massive restructuring will result in more overcrowded classrooms.

According to records, 50,421 children are in homerooms that are over the suggested class size limits. The numbers show 26,545 of Chicago’s littlest learners—in kindergarten, first or second grades— are in classrooms with 29 or more students. The district’s own guidelines say classes should be capped at 28 kids for younger students, 31 for third graders and up.

Eight thousand elementary school children are in classes with 35 or more students. Some are in homerooms of 40, even 45.

Wendy Katten, CPS parent and director of the nonprofit Raise Your Hand, says the numbers heighten her group’s concerns about the impact of closing schools. “Parents want class size addressed by the district,” says Katten. “And instead we’re moving to consolidate schools. 129 schools are going to be impacted with these closings. And what we’ll have is overcrowding and higher class sizes.”

The schools targeted to close or receive students tend to have lower class sizes than the rest of the district’s schools, the numbers show. On the low end, many classes have just a dozen or so students.

School officials have admitted privately that class sizes will increase for students in closing and receiving schools. They do not believe classes will hit 36, as activists have charged.

But the numbers obtained from the school district show that 18 percent of all elementary school homerooms have quietly crept over the recommended class size limits written into the teachers contract and school board policy.

“I hear members constantly letting me know that their class sizes are over what’s recommended in the contract,” says Chicago Teachers Union financial secretary Kristine Mayle. “This has been going on for years, it’s getting worse each year, and with this round of closures I think it’s going to make it even worse.”

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The Chicago Teachers Union's decision to go to court to try to stop the city from closing 53 elementary schools, while not unexpected, makes clear that the Board of Education's vote on the proposal next week will not put an end to the controversy.

The two lawsuits, filed on behalf of parents and their special needs children, say the proposed school closings are unfair, will harm students with disabilities and are discriminatory because almost all the students affected are African-American.

One lawsuit asks for a delay of at least a year before any schools are closed; the other asks for a permanent injunction on closings. Hearings on the suits are not expected until after the board votes Wednesday.

A CTU-backed lawsuit last year sought to block closings on behalf of local school council members, alleging that closings disproportionately affected African-Americans. That case was tossed out by a Cook County judge but is still under appeal.

The lead attorney for that case and those filed Wednesday is Tom Geoghegan, who said part of the purpose of taking legal action was to air the grievances many parents have against school closings.

"It's important, win or lose, to get the facts out to the public," Geoghegan said. "I don't think people really understand how much harm is going to be done to these children."

The lawsuits question the economic impact of school closings, which the district says are necessary to address underused buildings and save money.

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