The Chicago Public School board will be voting on Feb 27 on moving Edison Regional Gifted Center from its home of 20+ years against the wishes of almost every family who has a student there. This vote should have every parent of a CPS child concerned. CPS made this decision behind closed doors and the Edison families were not consulted or even notified of this until the deadline had passed to try to get our children into other gifted programs elsewhere. Many people are aware of the gifted stand alone programs in the city which are top schools in the state. Edison Regional Gifted Center is one of these schools. A diverse group of children K-8 housed in a small school setting with strong family involvement. The school represents one of CPS's success stories. They should be copying the successful formula here and applying it to other small school settings across the city. Instead, CPS has shown no respect for families or children and they want to uproot the program for no good reason other then to cover political blunders ( building a huge school in another neighborhood and now trying to fill it so the waste isn't evident) and not building much needed elementary schools on the Northwest side of the city to help fix the over crowding problem they have let get worse and worse year after year. They will essentially destroy a wonderful haven for different/special needs kids who will now be sharing a school with 400+ teenagers.
All city parents should be worried that their kids will be next.We had no idea that our school was in jeopardy as we are top scoring in the state.We have a school in which 100% of the girls surveyed feel safe and 97% of the boys do also. That is quite rare for a city school. They will now be putting our 5, 6 and 7 year olds into a building with hundreds of teens,metal detectors, wand searches, and drug busts. Our only hope is that enough chicago parents will become aware of what is happening and realize that their kids can be next.All children deserve respect not just the ones who can afford it.
We can't just pull our kids out and send them to our neighborhood schools as they are all working at 1-2 grades above grade level on all subjects.
The future will be profoundly altered for our children and since our kids come from all over the city, we don't have political representation to look out for our kids. We are a close knit group of parents and we are doing everything to stop this from happening to us and potentially you and your kids.
Thanks for listening and pass along the info to your neighbors, this affects all Chicago children,
WE DON'T WANT TO MOVE!!!!!!! Edison Regional Gifted Center Parent, Jody Garland