Raise Your Hand Statement in Support of Prioritizing Black Student Achievement

On October 22, 1963, a quarter of a million Black Chicago Public Schools students walked out of school to protest the segregation that kept Black students in overcrowded, under-resourced schools. Meanwhile, the district refused to integrate half-full schools serving white students, instead installing portable classrooms – “Willis Wagons” – in alleys near Black schools.

Mayor Daley’s appointed CPS superintendent ignored student requests and continued to maintain a system of resource apartheid. The community response was sharp and powerful.

Fifty years later, in 2013, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s appointed school board closed 49 schools serving predominantly Black students. At the same time, Emmanuel’s appointed board spent $475 million of our tax dollars building annexes and new schools that benefited predominantly white students. Today, these same schools are consistently ranked as the best in the nation as the impacts of school closures and turnarounds are felt across the South and West sides.

Clearly, there is a long legacy of acute segregation in Chicago Public Schools. This is just part of the anti-Black history of Chicago’s appointed school boards. The continuing legacy of these appointed board’s policy decisions can be seen in the unacceptable test scores, opportunity gaps, and abysmal literacy rates of Chicago’s Black students.

As Chicago prepares for our first elected school board, we have an opportunity to center the needs of Black communities who have watched our schools continuously dismantled and defunded for decades. Raise Your Hand unequivocally supports IAAFER, The Black Community Collaborative, and all our Black neighbors who have been organizing to ensure Black electoral representation and create a standing statewide and district school board committee focused on Black student achievement.

It is long past time for all of us dedicated to education justice in Chicago to recognize that focusing on Black students is the only path to success for this city we all love. Our future depends on it.

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