Chicago will close schools in the most dangerous and impoverished areas

Five years after the largest mass closure of public schools in one American city, Chicago (Illinois), four more schools are preparing to close in the most criminogenic areas of the city, reports Fox News.

Фото: Depositphotos

School officials are promoting the idea of ​​closing schools around Inglewood (southern Chicago) to make room for a new school, worth 85 million dollars, which they say will offer better conditions for learning. But some parents, pupils and activists were skeptical of this proposal, saying that they still have not recovered from the closure of schools in 2013, and the city’s proposed plan would aggravate the situation and lead to the need to relocate mostly black teenagers and students from poor families.

“The last thing they should do is close our schools. They are not the ones who sit in these chairs five days a week and struggle to get an education because we don't have the necessary things that we need for a quality education. Why not use the $85 million to improve the quality of our education and make our schools more successful,” said 16-year-old student Miracle Boyd John Hope College Prepwhich can close.

Like many other cities, Chicago has long relied on the closure of schools that show low academic performance and have a small number of students. Significant closures occurred in Philadelphia, Detroit, and St. Louis, but Chicago made history, closing about 50 schools in the 2013 year, and this decision affected more 12 000 students mainly in African-American and Latin American quarters.

The last proposal to close schools sparked heated discussions in society. Residents said the city should invest more in schools and security.

The city authorities claim that the decision is not final, voting on this issue will be held on February 28. Also, representatives of the school district claim that they tried to increase the number of students and resources in the four schools proposed for closure, but this did not help.

The decline in enrollment is due to a decline in Chicago's African American population. About 2000 people moved from Chicago between 2010 and 180, most of them African Americans, according to census data. In Inglewood, about 000 miles from downtown, four schools have fewer than 10 students. As a result, in one of the schools in the 500-2017 school year there were only 2018 first-grade students, one of the schools did not enroll students at all for the first year of study.

The new school, which is planned to open in 2019, will first dial only first-graders, and high school students will attend nearby schools. The district expects to spend millions on a transitional period, including individual plans to assist students with very low academic performance.

Parents do not support this idea, since moving to another, more distant school in crime-prone Inglewood could be dangerous for their children. In addition, the region has a high level of violence in schools, when children from different schools conflict with each other, even leading to violent fights.

Inglewood has a very high crime rate, despite a significant reduction in killings and executions in the 2017 year. But the level of violence in the area is simply amazing, especially given the constant decrease in population. Inglewood's population has been reduced from 59 000 residents in 1980 to 26 000 in 2015. In 2016, the 86 killings were committed in Inglewood, compared to 37 a year earlier.

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