Parents have filed restraining orders in federal court in Chicago to stop one public school closing approved by the Board of Education on Wednesday and the phasing out of a high school freshman class.
The action marks the first time in four years of annual school closings that parents have attempted to use legal action to prevent the district from shutting schools.
Despite the last-minute legal challenge, school board members voted to close three elementary schools in June and close Englewood High School to freshmen in September.
Englewood is expected to reopen within two years.
School officials have said Englewood, as well as Grant, 145 S. Campbell Ave., Bunche, 6515 S. Ashland Ave., and Howland, 1616 S. Spaulding Ave., were selected because of low test scores and poor performance.
The two emergency temporary restraining orders were filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Chicago. One request asks that the court keep the school district from closing Bunche Elementary, allow freshmen to stay at Englewood High School and prevent the district from changing attendance boundaries. The other seeks to prevent phasing out any grades at Englewood, 6201 S. Stewart Ave.
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Two hearings will be held before two judges Thursday morning.
“We don’t believe there is a basis in law for their motions,” said Ruth Moscovitch, the school district’s general counsel.
District officials say the schools were selected for “rebirth” under Renaissance 2010, an initiative that calls for closing poor performing schools and reopening 100 of them as charters, contract or district-run performance schools within the next five years.
Students at all of these schools will have the option of transferring to a neighborhood school. They also could attend other high-performing schools, where space is available, under the No Child Left Behind Act. They will be given first preference and also will receive transportation help.
But assurances from the district did little to appease the hundreds of people who showed up to protest the closings Wednesday during the district’s monthly board meeting.
Vera Hill, an English teacher at Englewood, said she does not think district administrators are looking at the issues through the children’s eyes.
Crossing different gang territories to attend another high school outside their neighborhood is a terrifying prospect for students, many at the board meeting said.
“I know it’s difficult for people who don’t live in the neighborhood to understand how serious this problem is with the gangs,” she said. “That is the real problem.”