Chicago Parents Occupy Elementary School Building to
Prevent Demolition Whittier
Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
October 21, 2010
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/21/chicago_parents_occupy_elementary_school_building

A preliminary deal has been reached between Chicago
Public Schools and a group of parents who have occupied
a field house at Whittier Elementary School for thirty-
seven days to prevent its demolition. The Chicago Public
Schools have agreed to build a library and scrap plans
to demolish the field house and lease it to the local
parents' association instead. We get a report from
Democracy Now!'s Jaisal Noor and speak to Chicago
community organizer Cecile Carroll. 


Guest: Cecile Carroll, Chicago community organizer and
co-director of Blocks Together. 

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JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to the ongoing struggle to
preserve quality public education across the country.
Today we go to a longstanding battle in Chicago.

A preliminary deal was reached Wednesday between Chicago
Public Schools and a group of immigrant parents who have
occupied a field house at Whittier Elementary School for
thirty-seven days to prevent its demolition. The Chicago
Public Schools have agreed to build a library and scrap
plans to demolish the field house and lease it to the
local parents' association instead.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite the agreement, the parents aren't
going home just yet. They've vowed to continue the sit-
in at the field house until they get an agreement in
writing.

For more, we go to this report filed by Democracy Now!'s
Jaisal Noor, who traveled to Chicago last weekend.

    JAISAL NOOR: In Chicago, forty school parents are
    entering their fifth week of an occupation of a
    small field house on the campus of Whittier
    Elementary. The school is located in the city's
    impoverished Pilsen neighborhood, which is comprised
    mostly of recent Mexican immigrants. Daniella Mencia
    is a fifth grader at Whittier.

    DANIELLA MENCIA: We normally call it "La Casita,"
    "The Little House." We do a lot of things here. The
    moms know-they learn their GEDs-they earn them. They
    know-they teach them how to sew. They teach them how
    to make bracelets. And this Casita is really
    powerful because they use it for lots of things.

    JAISAL NOOR: An assessment commissioned by the
    Chicago school system found the building unsafe for
    public use and put the cost of demolition at over
    $350,000. That amount would come from the $1.4
    million in Chicago's tax increment financing, or
    TIF, funds that parents had secured for renovations
    and an expansion of the school. Daniella's mother is
    Araceli Gonzalez, a vocal member of the community.

    ARACELI GONZALEZ: The school-there has been a fight
    for seven years. The school was in so bad of
    conditions, so finally the TIF gave money, and it
    was, you know, part of the-TIF is our tax money. So
    they remodeled, you know, renovated stuff that
    needed to be renovated. It wasn't like a luxury. It
    needed to be renovated. If you would have seen this
    place before, oh, my god, it was bad.

    JAISAL NOOR: The parents became skeptical of the
    school system's claim when they learned the decision
    to demolish the field house was made prior to their
    structural assessment. The community commissioned an
    independent assessment, which found the building in,
    quote, "good condition" with only the roof needing
    repair. Whittier is one of 160 Chicago public
    schools without a library. Eager to preserve the
    building the call La Casita, community members
    launched a campaign to remake the La Casita into a
    library. Again, this is ten-year old Daniella
    Mencia.

    DANIELLA MENCIA: When I heard that they were going
    to knock it down, but the moms wanted to make it to
    a library, I knew that this was my fight.

    JAISAL NOOR: Daniella's mother, Araceli Gonzalez,
    said that back in September the mothers decided to
    occupy the building until their demands were heard.

    ARACELI GONZALEZ: I mean, we've been here since the
    15th. The moms that made the decision, we were like
    about ten. And now we're like about thirty-five to
    forty, about forty, I want to say, parents. And
    they're coming more.

    JAISAL NOOR: The demonstrators have resisted several
    attempts to remove them. On October 4th, Chicago
    Public Schools cut gas supplies to La Casita. But
    after two days of public outcry, the Chicago City
    Council ordered the gas be turned back on and the
    demolition be halted for six months. The following
    day, parents and volunteers opened their own
    makeshift library in La Casita. The community has
    since donated hundreds of books to La Casita.
    Daniella Mencia says her teachers are eager to make
    use of Whittier's new library.

    DANIELLA MENCIA: They're telling us to come here and
    take out a book from the library, and they say it
    like really rejoiceful. And I know we're going to
    keep this library, and this is going to be like-it's
    going to be great for us to learn and to be better
    in reading.

    JAISAL NOOR: Chicago community organizer Carolina
    Gaete, who has been working in the Pilsen community
    for five years, says the struggle goes far beyond
    Whittier Elementary and building a library there.

    CAROLINA GAETE: This fight here at Whittier is not
    just about Whittier. It's about really taking a
    stand and defending public education.

    JAISAL NOOR: President Obama's Education Secretary,
    Arne Duncan, was the head of Chicago Public Schools
    from 2001 to 2009. Through direct mayoral control of
    the school system, he oversaw a program known as
    Renaissance 2010. It aimed to close sixty public
    schools and replace them with more than 100
    selective charter schools. Gaete says these policies
    resulted in a crisis that neighborhood schools like
    Whittier are facing now.

    CAROLINA GAETE: This has been in effect for already
    ten years here in Chicago, and this-when you go to
    communities where there's no public schools, and
    those are the communities with a high crime rate. We
    cannot separate the really drying people of
    resources, then expecting the community to flourish.
    When you're taking away the schools, children don't
    have access to education. And I think that has been
    the effect of Renaissance 2010. When a group of
    mothers from Pilsen, an economically challenged
    immigrant community, have to sit in for twenty-five
    days to get a library, that is insane.

    JAISAL NOOR: Today, Arne Duncan is overseeing a push
    by the administration to aggressively expand charter
    schools and mayoral control across the country
    through programs such as Race to the Top.

    CAROLINA GAETE: I think this is a call out for all
    the other cities that are asking for mayoral control
    in order to get extra money with the Race to the
    Top. Don't do it. Fight it. Fight it tooth and nail.
    At the end of the day, it is the worst thing that
    has happened to Chicago. It is the worst thing that
    has happened to public education.

    JAISAL NOOR: The parents are in negotiations with
    Chicago Public Schools over the future of La Casita.
    They have vowed to continue the occupation until the
    school system agrees to allow Whittier to keep its
    new library. Chicago Public Schools did not respond
    to interview requests for the story. Araceli
    Gonzalez says she hopes the Whittier struggle can
    serve as a model for other communities.

    ARACELI GONZALEZ: You know, we need to step up and
    do something about it, and this is what we basically
    did for our community. And I hope it goes on and on.
    In those other schools, they need stuff. They have
    the courage, and they could say, "The Whittier moms
    did it, so we can do it, too."

    JAISAL NOOR: For Democracy Now!, this is Jaisal Noor
    in Chicago.

AMY GOODMAN: And special thanks also to Nicole Hummel.

For more on the story, we stay in Chicago with Cecile
Carroll, community organizer and co-director of the
group Blocks Together. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Cecile Carroll, this is almost like
a Republic Windows and Doors struggle for education,
public education. Could you talk about what the parents
have decided with this latest offer from the Chicago
school officials to end the standoff?

CECILE CARROLL: Well, I haven't been with the parents in
the last couple of days. I've actually been in
Washington, DC, working on some facility stuff for the
greater Chicago area. But with every negotiation that
the parents have had with CPS, they've been cautiously
optimistic. They've been trying to make sure that they
are being very careful with each step that they put
forward and making sure that they are still making it
clear to the administration that they will continue the
sit-in if the promises that are put on the table right
now fall through.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And could you place this in a larger
context of the impact of this more than month-long
struggle on the Chicago community and what it means for
parents' struggles for public education nationwide?

CECILE CARROLL: Sure. I'm so inspired by the Whittier
struggle, and I think it's such a timely struggle, as
well. I think what's been happening here in the last
couple of years under the education policy Renaissance
2010 is that when it started to play out in the local
communities, is that some of the schools that were
already struggling in a lot of our neighborhoods where
there's low-income people of color, some of the schools
that were affected by the school actions from
Renaissance 2010 ended up taking more resources from the
schools that did not have actions. So you'll have a
community-let's say there's twenty schools, and five of
those schools have some type of school action, a
turnaround, a closure for a charter, a consolidation of
a school for another one-

JUAN GONZALEZ: We have about ten seconds left.

CECILE CARROLL: And what happened was that the other
schools that didn't have these school actions ended up
not having any resources. And Whittier is a clear
example of that. And those top-down decision makings end
up having the community actually struggling even more.

AMY GOODMAN: Cecile Carroll, thanks so much for being
with us, Chicago community organizer, co-director of
Blocks Together.

_____________________________________________

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