This is the season when our city makes difficult decisions. Just as budgets are moral documents, elections also have major effects. As faith leaders, we are always called on to focus on the future. But this season, especially, we want to speak up for Chicago’s children.
The next mayor of Chicago — whether it is Paul Vallas or Brandon Johnson — will oversee the transition to an elected Chicago Public Schools board.
Having an elected board, instead of a board appointed by the mayor, will be a monumental change for the city, especially our children. However, the elected board won’t be fully in place until 2027, giving the new mayor a small window of opportunity to set the course of CPS. But important decisions need to be made even in that narrow window.
The next mayor must reject the inequitable policies of CPS that left young Black and brown Chicagoans behind. In recent years, the Black and brown kids have been disproportionately affected by the district’s practice of closing schools and the overreliance on outdated educational practices that ignore the realities many of our kids face each day.
Amazingly, school closings are back on the city’s agenda. We call on our next mayor to abide by the school closure moratorium that extends through 2025 and do more to invest in schools and creative educational programs, such as Urban Prep Academies, that have been proved to equip our Black youths, especially young men, to succeed.
Urban Prep is a model for what public education can look like. Shockingly, however, there is a movement afoot to shut down this important educational center.
Here are the important facts. Urban Prep Academies serves Black male students, a historically underserved and left-behind population in our city. Due to school closures over the past decade, at only 17 years old, its Englewood campus is the oldest nonselective enrollment public high school in that neighborhood.
In 2006, when the campus in Englewood opened, a University of Chicago Consortium on School Research study found that only 4% of Black males who started ninth grade in CPS earned a bachelor’s degree by age 25. Since its first graduating class in 2010, Urban Prep Academies has had 13 consecutive years of 100% of its graduates accepted into a four-year college or university.
Thankfully, the Tribune Editorial Board recognizes the importance of schools like Urban Prep Academies, writing in a November editorial: “Yet anyone being honest knows that what Urban Prep is doing, what it has achieved, cannot be done under a CPS template. That’s not to say CPS cannot serve its students well in other ways, but parents sending their boys to Urban Prep made a specific decision for a particular kind of education.”
Most important, the amazing students of Urban Prep have spoken for themselves. In a video, they share what life would be like without their school, their sanctuary in this city. They remind us that, without Urban Prep:
“I would lose relationship with staff members that have known me since I was a freshman.”
“I may not be able to experience or understand my culture, history and identity.”
“I won’t be in a school where people actually care about me and my well-being.”
“I may not be exposed to the same scholarship or internship opportunities.”
“I won’t be provided with social and emotional development tools and strategies.”
“No Urban Prep means we won’t have access to quality education.”
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CPS claims it wants to model Urban Prep in other schools; it has tried for 16 years and failed. There is no reason to believe CPS could be successful now, especially in this time of structural organizational change. Instead, and unbelievably, it is poised to dismantle the school. CPS has revoked the school’s charter, holding students accountable for now-remedied poor decisions by past leadership. This appalling move follows the district’s long pattern of exacerbating inequities in the city’s public schools.
Pandemic recovery presented us all with the opportunity to reimagine our city, including education, and upend generations of systemic racism and disinvestment. It gave us the opportunity to think creatively and to take into account recent breakthroughs in brain science and new understandings in childhood development. The change in leadership at City Hall and the overhaul of CPS governance present another opportunity to correct inequities in our educational system.
Chicago’s next mayor, the new leadership of CPS and our entire city would be fools if they choose to divest from schools such as Urban Prep because of ideological beliefs that ignore the realities in the city’s most underserved neighborhoods.
Our children are the future. They deserve the best in education we can offer. Now is the time to ensure that schools like Urban Prep are given the chance to continue to thrive in Chicago.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Revs. Otis Moss III, Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and Michael Pfleger joined the Tribune’s opinion section last summer for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].