Dear Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Family,
Today, 11 parents, teachers and community supporters began a hunger strike at Dyett High School on the south side of Chicago in order to finally win our sustainable community school, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology Academy. Dyett will be the hub of a “Sustainable Community School Village” with 6 primary feeder schools.
Three years ago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel announced the closing of Dyett High, the last open-enrollment public high school in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Despite the fact that charter schools in Chicago have been a huge and consistent failure, even according to the Walton Family Foundation-funded CREDO study, Rahm has been steadily opening more and more of them as he systematically closes and defunds our public schools.
In Bronzeville, we refused to allow the destruction of our own public high school. We kept the school open until June, and then we won a commitment to reopen it from Rahm’s own appointed school board.
But the reopening of Dyett as a sustainable community school, the school all our children deserve, is in doubt. Chicago Public Schools promised to make a final decision on August 26, but now they have taken the issue off of the Board of Education’s agenda. Will CPS instead turn our school over to a corporation to run it as a citywide “contract” school, denying entrance to local students?
We cannot allow that. I am joining in the hunger strike today, and I urge the people of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools family across the country to join me in whatever way you can.
We are using the hashtags #SaveDyett, #WeAreDyett and #FightForDyett, and we would love if you could join us on Twitter.
If you stand with the 11 strikers, let us know by emailing us at info@reclaimourschools.org. We’ll be sure to send you updates as the hunger strike progresses. We hope we can count on you as we move forward to win the schools all our children deserve.
Yours for the schools all our children deserve,
Jitu Brown
Executive Director, Journey for Justice Alliance
Member, Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School
