CPS considers changing school choice policy, creating new 5-year plan

Chicago Public Schools is considering a major change and a new five-year strategic plan that would specifically impact selective enrollment.

"This news has just made me feel very, not only afraid for my child and her potential, but also ashamed," said CPS mother, Natasha Haque.

The possibility of changes has many parents concerned for their children’s educational future.

The change in policy could eliminate the opportunity for students to test into one of CPS’s selective high schools.

"The selective enrollment schools are one of the shining stars of CPS. They are actually something that CPS has done right," said CPS mother Katie Milewski. "And it needs to be supported."

The Board of Education plans to meet Thursday to discuss several things, including a resolution regarding its new five-year strategic plan. That plan would focus on strengthening neighborhood schools across the city.

CPS said it’s a "critical step toward closing opportunity and achievement gaps."

Here's what the district wrote in its full statement:

"The Board’s resolution aims to guide engagement and development in partnership with the District on a new strategic plan with an emphasis on strengthening all neighborhood schools as a critical step toward supporting all students and closing opportunity and achievement gaps. Work on the District’s next five-year Strategic Plan has begun and will continue this spring with community engagement and outreach, beginning with the District’s Shape Our Future Survey as well as current engagement sessions about the District’s facilities master plan. The new strategic plan will be approved by the Board of Education in the summer of 2024. While CPS will work with the community and its City partners to co-design the strategic plan, the parameters call for 'a model that centers neighborhood schools by investing in and acknowledging them as institutional anchors in our communities, and by prioritizing communities most impacted by past and ongoing racial and economic inequity and structural disinvestment.' Specific community engagement sessions about the development of the new strategic plan will begin in February."

"Neighborhood schools absolutely need help. No doubt about that. I’m not sure why those concepts are mutually exclusive," added Milewski. "Why neighborhood schools can’t be built up, at the same time of supporting selective enrollment and magnet schools?"

Haque said, "If there are adjustments that need to be made in terms of equity, I am all for that, but reducing the quality is not the way to go, it’s the opposite way to go."