A group of Little Village neighborhood residents and two elected officials Wednesday called on Chicago Public Schools to build a new, multimillion dollar school facility for an area elementary and high school program.
The proposal would bring big changes to a cluster of four schools that use separate facilities located within feet of each other in the West Side’s predominantly Latino neighborhood, almost two years after CPS tried to consolidate some of those same buildings.
“We’re always marginalized by the politics of the moment, where glitzy high schools are being proposed in various parts of the city, some north, some south,” said Ald. George Cardenas, 12th, during a news conference. “We, on our end, ask ourselves what do we have to do to get the attention of officials and those that are in power to make sure the resources are spread evenly to everyone.”
District officials have signaled they’ll consider community-led building proposals and are currently working through plans to create two new high schools. One is a new site to replace a group of struggling campuses in the Englewood area; the other a controversial effort to open an open-enrollment high school in the growing South Loop by closing an elementary school with a largely African-American student body.
But it’s not clear if the latest idea has the needed support from CPS to actually get built. The district did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Residents want the city and state to construct a two-story building of roughly 50,000 square feet on part of a parking lot adjacent to the current Saucedo Elementary campus, which is a few blocks north of the Cook County Jail.
Saucedo currently shares parts of its building with Telpochcalli Elementary School. The plan would have Telpochcalli move some operations into the new facility, but the building would largely become the new home of the Spry Community Links High School.
Spry, a small high school program with less than 200 students who study year-round and graduate in three years, now shares some facilities with the nearby Spry Elementary School but also leases space from a neighborhood organization. The plan would keep the Spry elementary school in its current location while the high school would move across the street.
“The designs that you see right here should not go unnoticed, because parents that are here today, that are standing right here, that’s because they worked so hard and they’re so passionate about prioritizing the needs of our students,” state Rep. Silvana Tabares, D-Chicago, said Wednesday. “They want a better building, they want to be able for kids to have more resources.”
In December 2015, the district proposed consolidating Spry’s high school grades into the building currently used by the Saucedo and Telpochcalli schools.
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The original CPS proposal would have allowed the high school to end its rental arrangement and gradually move students into the single building by the 2018-19 school year. CPS abandoned the plan months later amid intense community opposition, while saying officials wanted to find an agreeable solution for the area.
The proposal’s advocates could not specify where the money would come from to finance estimated construction costs that could run higher than $20 million.