After almost eight hours of negotiations and one false announcement of an agreement, Mayor Richard Daley’s aides announced late Monday a resolution to a standoff between Chicago Public Schools officials and parents who oppposed having their children bused to another school.
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Gary Chico, the mayor’s chief of staff, emerged from Chicago Board of Education headquarters at 1819 W. Pershing Rd. to announce an agreement between the city and the school board to build a new school for children from Daley Elementary School, 5017 S. Hermitage Ave. The school board closed Daley School because of unsafe and unsanitary conditions and had arranged for the students to be bused to Washington School in Englewood.
“Obviously passions are running very high. That is something the mayor was concerned about,” said Chico. “Having a school in the neighborhood is something very important, and we’ve come up with a good resolution.”
Chico said the city agreed to provide funds to assist the school board and the community in building a new school in the New City neighborhood on the South Side, where the children live. The agreement includes giving the community a voice in the design of the new school and its location, Chico said. In addition, the school board agreed to add money for the construction of a new school to next year’s bond issue.
Parents who have waged a hunger strike since last Thursday celebrated the end of the controversy outside school headquarters. “Oh, yeah, it’s over. It’s finished right now,” said Joquin Becerril, leader of the parent group. “We’re very, very happy.”
On Sept. 12, parents began teaching about 100 pupils in an abandoned lot after they refused a plan to bus their children to Washington School, 838 W. Marquette Rd.
The controversy came to a head Monday when state legislators intervening on behalf of the parents, lobbied first with Daley administration officials and later with school board officials.
A resolution seemed at hand earlier in the evening when school officials announced a temporary resolution, only to be contradicted later by the legislators, who included state Sens. Jesus Garcia and Miguel del Valle. In the end, the temporary plan stood firm.
Supt. Argie Johnson unveiled a plan calling for the students to report Tuesday morning at the east branch of the Daley School, located at 4946 S. Paulina St. The other 450 students, who have not objected to being bused, would continue to attend Washington Schoool.
The east branch of the Daley School has remained open for kindergartners and preschoolers.
Johnson said that school officials would register the Daley students on Tuesday and set up mobile units at a undisclosed nearby school if the measure is supported by the local school council.
“Our primary goal is to get our students back in school,” Johnson said.
The meeting began Monday afternoon while many parents congregated near the vacant west Daley campus to meet their children, who were arriving in buses from Washington School.
Nicole Chavez stood under a pine tree at Hermitage and 50th Streets waiting for her daughters’ school bus. It was 20 minutes late.
“I’m not happy at all, ” said Chavez, noting the bus was due in front of the vacant Daley School at 2:30 p.m. “The buses come late. They are always late. The most I have ever waited is 3:15 p.m.”
Some of the parents began a hunger strike and kept their children from boarding buses headed to Washington School, some 15 minutes away.
But Chavez is not a part of the protest. In fact, other than the late buses, she said she has no problem with the plan to bus her daughter.
Chavez and other parents say they see busing as the best solution at this time.
“My daughter likes it,” said Chavez. “She said it’s better, it’s bigger, the teachers are good, and they don’t keep them outside. She said she goes right in to get breakfast. I have no problem as long as it is safe, and they are watching them.”
“I’m for it,” Carmen Cita Rivera said. “The condition of this school (Daley) is totally ugly.” Washington School has “a library instead of a closet, a big art room and a computer room.”
Many of the protesting parents have not visited Washington School. But, Rivera, 25, said she visited the school a couple weeks ago when the school board provided transportation for parents to visit the school.
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“At first I was a little hesitant to put them on a bus, but I said let my kids decide what they like,” Rivera said. “And they liked it. They said, `Mommy, I want to keep on going.”‘