On February 2, 2012 Educators, parents, and students packed the Chicago Board of Education headquarters at 125 S. Clark to demand that CPS reconsider its plan to turnaround Marquette Elementary School (6550 S. Richmond). This was the public hearing for the Marquette turnaround proposal. Turnaround is a program where every employee in a school building is fired and the school’s management is turned over to a private vendor. In this case, the vendor is the politically connected Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL).
Over the course of the two-hour meeting, only two speakers spoke in favor of the turnaround. They left abruptly after the meeting and refused to identify where they were from, leading some to attendees to believe they were paid for their time. When CTU staff coordinator Jackson Potter gave his testimony at the hearing, he has asked the audience -- almost entirely comprised of members of the Marquette School community -- if they knew who they were and they replied with a resounding, “no.” One activist mentioned that he had seen one of them speakers at another school action hearing earlier in the week.
Marquette has suffered a barrage of Board of Education mandates over the past few years that have led many to believe the school has been sabotaged to make a case for the school to be turned-around.
Speaker after speaker explained to the hearing officer and Board of Education proxies why they should let Marquette School community continue its own program to fix the school, which has already made gains.
Parent Marisol Jimenez said that since the announcement of the turnaround, the school has been given fewer resources. She stated via translator that CPS, “says there’s no money and then [with the turnaround], it appears.”
Marquette’s Parent Advisory Council Chair and alumnus Antonia Hernandez explained her dismay at the decision to turnaround the school. She thanked her Marquette teachers for inspiring her to graduate high school and college. She asked, “Why do you want to experiment on our children? Why weren’t [the parents asked if they wanted the turnaround] before the proposal was announced?” In tears, she explained that she didn’t know how she would explain to her daughter that her teachers might not be at the school next year.
John Simmons of Strategic Learning Initiatives (SLI) explained that if the Board gave Marquette the resources that would have gone into the AUSL turnaround and kept the existing staff, SLI could be used to improve scores and change the school culture.
In her testimony, 20-year veteran Marquette teacher and CTU delegate Marcy Hardaloupas blamed Chicago politics as the reason CPS is so insistent on turning the school over to AUSL, “The mayor appointed AUSL’s David Vitale and Tim Cawley to the Board of Education. Isn’t that a conflict of interest, or is it politics and usual?”