Schools
$60M 'Obama Prep' School on Hold in Aftermath of Deal Stopping Chicago Teachers Strike
Tentative agreement funnels money that would've paid to build the Near North Side selective enrollment high school to CPS instead.
CHICAGO, IL — A proposed Near North Side selective enrollment high school that was to bear President Barack Obama's name has been postponed indefinitely, one of the immediate after-effects from the city's tentative agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union that avoided a strike, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The school, which would've cost $60 million school to build, was one of the projects that was taken off the table by Mayor Rahm Emanuel after he earmarked a chunk of the $175 million surplus from tax-increment financing funds for Chicago Public Schools, the report stated.
Originally, that windfall was going to be spent on projects like "Obama Prep," the unofficial nickname for the school, according to the report. But now about $88 million of the surplus will go toward helping economically strapped schools in the district, the report added.
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Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward), who made the call to drop the ax on the prep school, told the Sun-Times that the decision to sacrifice the project — along with a handful of others around the city that would have been paid for using the TIF surplus — ultimately benefits the children of Chicago, because it helped avert a teachers strike. He also said the school faced challenges with the Public Building Commission and didn't have a location after the first choice, Stanford Park, was nixed.
The biggest downside, Burnett told the Sun-Times, is that Obama Prep can't be used as an enticement to sell the nearby property and mixed-income housing in the Cabrini Green area.
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Emanuel proposed the Near North Side selective enrollment school as he geared up for his 2015 re-election, the report stated. Obama Prep would have been the 11th of its kind in Chicago, and it would have been built to accommodate about 1,200 high-achieving students, with 30 percent of the enrollment coming from the surrounding community, the report added.
The project had its detractors, too. One group of parents petitioned against the prep school and argued the city should work to revitalize neighborhood schools instead of creating another selective enrollment school, the Sun-Times reports.
More via the Chicago Sun-Times
photo by Pete Souza, The White House | Wikimedia Commons
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