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News > Features
Ald. Ginger Rugai told a packed gymnasium at Keller School Thursday that Chicago Public Schools would relocate the city's top-performing elementary school over her dead body. The meeting, which was largely civil except for a brief outburst by a parent of a Mount Greenwood Elementary School student, lasted a little more than an hour, but the community got the answer it was looking for: There are no imminent plans to relocate it ... at least not now. Rugai told the crowd that CPS needs to come up with a long-term plan to address overcrowding at Mount Greenwood and Cassell schools instead of simply moving Keller to free up space for overcrowded Mount Greenwood, which is projected to hit 800 students next school year. She said that an eight-room annex at Mount Greenwood School, 10841 Homan Ave., would address overcrowding. But the price tag is high: It would reportedly cost CPS $20 million build an annex. And no other solution is cheap, either. Even the oft-criticized mobile classrooms cost $100,000 apiece. Additionally, CPS reportedly has allocated nothing in next year's capital improvement budget for 19th Ward schools. "We are not relocating Keller anywhere right now. We are absolutely 110% committed to Keller," said Jose Alvarez, the chief officer for external affairs at CPS. Yet some parents wondered how much he can be trusted. Earlier this month he told parents that there were no plans to consider moving Keller to an abandoned school at 5125 S. Princeton. But on Thursday he did an about-face and acknowledged that the site had been discussed. Some parents confronted Alvarez and CPS officials, demanding statistics of how students performed after being relocated. For instance, Lenart Gifted School - which moved in 2001 to 81st and LaSalle - used to be the top-performing school in Chicago. Since its move, it has dropped several spots. |
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