West Side education activists say they have a new tactic to stop
school closings in Chicago. The plan involves filing stacks of parent
complaints with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil
Rights.
The strategy is centered around the adverse affects the
school closings will have on disabled and African-American students,
said Elce Redmond with the South Austin Community Coalition.
The
plan aims to mobilize the community and further expose how closing 50
neighborhood schools, concentrated on the South and West Sides, will
impact children. Redmond said the goal is to send busloads of people to
deliver the complaints to the civil rights office in Chicago and
possibly have people go to Washington.
"We want to go to the Department of Education and say, 'Listen, based on these complaints, we
have a very serious crisis here,'" Redmond said at a West Side community
meeting Thursday night. "And a serious crisis that as a federal
government, who is supposedly in charge of protecting young people, you
have to step in and do something." Read more »
People with disabilities are not provided access to roughly eight stations along the 