Neighborhoods across the city are desperately fighting to keep their schools open, many of them by arguing that the 50-plus closures suggested by Chicago Public Schools officials will devastate their already ailing communities. A report from the Chicago Teachers Union released last month looks at the devastation that the neighborhood schools were facing in another way--before the latest list of school closures came down the pipeline.
The 73-page “A Tale of Two Schools” zooms into the day-to-day operations of two Chicago Public Schools in troubled neighborhoods. Simon Guggenheim Elementary School in West Englewood and Jacob Beidler Elementary School in East Garfield Park both have similar percentages of low-income students and are in communities facing high rates of violence...