May Community Academy after-school and community programs too valuable to lose, advocates for keeping school open say

The YMCA offers after-school, summer and weekend programs at the school, 512 S. Lavergne Ave. And it offers family-support services, job-readiness classes and career-development workshops for parents, Walton said.

May and the YMCA also have a relationship through the Community School’s Initiative, which brings after-school programming and outside resources into six public schools across Chicago’s West and South sides, as reported by AustinTalks last year.

The Westside Health Authority and Fathers Who Care, among other service providers, also work at May, Walton said.

“May Community Academy is the wrong school to think about closing,” Walton told CPS officials at the Feb. 13 meeting. “If you ask anyone who knows about the Austin area, they will bear witness to the drastic improvements that have occurred at May Community Academy under Principal [Roger] Lewis.”

Neither May Principal Roger Lewis nor Assistant Principal Ruthanne Tolliver returned AustinTalks’ interview requests.

Schools are considered effectively used when they are at least 80 percent utilized, district officials have said.

The school also has the lowest of three academic ratings – Level 3 – and is on probation.

But May’s Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT) composite scores are on the rise.

In 2012, 60.6 percent of students met or exceeded standards on the test. That’s up from 58.8 percent in 2011 and 51.3 percent in 2010.

Valerie Betts, a teacher at May who serves on the school’s Local School Council, expressed her frustration about CPS’ school-closing process at the second of two West Side meetings.

She said at the February meeting she wasn’t going to bring up May’s rising test scores again, because they can be found online.

“Why do I have to keep repeating myself?” Betts said to CPS representatives at the meeting. “They tell me somebody’s listening. I want to know who is if I have to keep repeating myself over and over and over again. Who is listening to me? Who?”

All public comments at the February and Jan. 31 meeting were recorded and will be complied in a report for CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, according to CPS.

The district says it has too many empty seats and needs to shut down some underutilized neighborhood schools to close its looming $1 billion deficit. Byrd-Bennett recently announced high schools and high-performing schools are off the table.

CPS officials also announced they will not shut down schools with more than 600 students, schools that recently experienced a school action or are in the process of adding grades, among other criteria.

CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler said the 129 schools on the list are under consideration to close, but the process is far from over. There are other factors Byrd-Bennett will take into account before making final recommendations, and community members should continue to express their needs and concerns to the district, she said.

The district is expected to make final school closing recommendations no later than March 31.

One May teacher took CPS officials to task over its reported budget and school-utilization crisis.

“The officials at CPS have claimed that 100,000 of our students have left the city,” said Asif Wilson at the February meeting. “That is a complete and utter lie, people – 28,289 students have left.”

CTU said in a statement last year that the commission could be a front for charter proponents as it shares shares the same office and has ties to the charter supporters Civic Consulting Alliance, New Schools for Chicago and the Renaissance Schools Fund.

“With strong ties to the charter operators and school reform leaders, taxpayers should ask the mayor if his new commission is just a front group for further school privatization,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey in a December press release. “Why didn’t the commission disclose conflicts of interest up front? How can we trust the commission to be fair when its chairman and key advisers have such a clear agenda? Taxpayers, parents and the public school educators of Chicago deserve clear answers.”

Wilson added, “I want you to do a full audit of the budget, which last year showed a $344 million surplus and over the last four years has shown a surplus of $920 million.”

CPS representatives did not address specific questions during public comment at both Austin-North Lawndale Network meetings, but all testimony was recorded, CPS officials said.