Chicago School Boad Execs Must Be Idiots

Since they took away my favorite radio station here in Chicago and replaced it with an all news radio station, I've been listening to the news A LOT.  There are no good radio stations (unless you consider rap music great music) so I've decided the news is the next best thing.  I didn't hear this today but they mentioned on the radio last week that they may be closing a couple Chicago Public Schools due to the fact that they are falling below standards necessary to stay open.  This makes no sense to me.  Why? you may ask.

If they close a public school, that means that the kids from that school will have to go to the nearest open school.  I've never been to a CPS so I can't say I know exactly what it's like but I do know that they have at least 30 kids per classroom.  I also know that no CPS is doing particularly awesome at scoring well on tests.  Some are pretty average, some are less than average, maybe some are slightly more..but none score extremely high.  So what makes these school officials think that closing one school and sending MORE kids to another school will do?  With more students, the teachers will just have a harder time spending one-on-one time with students.  To me, that's the most important thing.  When I was a kid, there were few enough students per classroom so that the teacher could spend individual time with all of the students who needed help.  This was, kids didn't fall behind on subjects.  My high school was big enough to allow a max of 25 students per classroom with four different levels for each subject (trans, prep, accel, and honors/AP). 

I feel like this is just going to be a downward spiral.  They will close these schools and then more schools will start to fail to meet standards and they will close their doors.  When will it stop?  I get that closing these schools will help them save money but how much money do they think they're going to save...at the cost of children's education?

I'm so glad that my husband and I decided that we are either definitely moving out to a suburb where the public schools are just as good as private (my home town, *crosses fingers*..too bad it's so expensive out there) or fork up the money for private school.  I'm a big advocate for public schools but, when it comes down to my son's education, I'll definitely do what I think is best for him.