In 2013, 50 of Chicago's public schools — predominantly on the South and West sides — were shut down in the largest mass school closure in U.S. history. Today marks the 10-year anniversary of that historic and controversial decision.
The former Trumbull Elementary School at Ashland and Foster avenues closed in 2013. The building is now used by the Chicago Waldorf School. then-Chicago Board of Education Vice President Jesse Ruiz voiced frustration that Chicago Public Schools had repeatedly shut down more and more school buildings each year.“We’ve been doing this a little bit at a time for the last decade,” he said at the time.
“We believe that our city is under siege right now,” Brandon Johnson — then a teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, now the mayor of Chicago —Parents, students and teachers protested extensively for days ahead of the May 22 board meeting where the six board members voted unanimously to close each school — 50 total schools located in 46 different buildings — one-by-one.
And despite officials’ hopes that the closures would stem the district’s declining enrollment, a decade later, the number of students attending CPS schools has fallen by nearly 80,000 students as of the start of the 2022-23 school year. But that study found kids both from the shuttered schools and nearby “welcoming” schools, which took on many of the displaced students, saw negative effects on test scores.
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