"Holy smokes!" President Obama Releases Full Pre-K Plan

[frazzled]

44. Too bad, I think it's a good (and different) way of approaching early education

On the other comment you made, although I am all for smaller class sizes and think it's essential, it's still not economically viable to keep a building open that houses 500 kids if there are only 250 attending. The overhead of utilities, resources like library materials, cleaning services, and repairs to a bunch of different schools that are only half full is not a good use of resources.

This is a terrible conundrum, and I don't know which side to believe. But there are actual facts to be had here, not just emotions, and nobody seems to be doing the research. I was reading the article in the Tribune today, and it presented both sides: the District says it's facing a $1 Billion deficit next year and that a whole bunch of schools are running at far under capacity, due to loss of population. The vocal parents are saying this is not true. Well, it's either true or not true, so why can't the Tribune investigate?

We know, for sure, that the City of Chicago lost a lot of population in the last decade. It was a big story, and if you google it, you will see it was covered by many news outlets, especially the aspect of the population loss being largely in African American communities (which would mean the South and West sides, predominantly). That's a fact, but just how much school population did that migration affect?

The 2010 Census reveals that Chicago's black population is leaving -- to Houston, to Dallas, to Atlanta and to the other black talent-magnet cities of the 21st century. And in some cases, they're moving to the smaller cities of the Deep South that were once points of origin for the Great Migration.

The 2010 Census showed the city of Chicago lost 200,000 people over the last decade. The city now has about as many people as it did in 1910. There are 181,000 fewer African Americans in the city, a whopping drop of 17 percent, and 72,000 fewer in the region as a whole.

At the same time, an influx of Latinos, many of Mexican ancestry, presents a notable counterweight to the black exodus. Latinos are increasing their share of Chicago's population, and there are 25,000 more Latinos in the city now than in 2000. And more and more, Latino immigrants are "skipping the city" and heading straight to the suburbs, where jobs and cheap housing can more easily be found.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/chicago-black-population_n_917848.html

The District may be exaggerating; but the opposition seems to be ignoring some facts altogether. What is the truth and why doesn't the media provide better investigative reporting instead of the usual "he said/she said" coverage? No one wants to see their school closed and consolidated with another. Change is hard. I hope this can happen with minimal disruption to people's lives, with actual improvements in educational impact rather than more wreckage, and with savings that can help the city schools heal and modernize.

I guess that's hoping for too much.