For the last few weeks, Mayor Emanuel has been promising parents and students at schools he’s closing that they’ll have everything from new air conditioners to new computers in the schools he’s sending them to.
Just so you know, Lincoln Park is a high-functioning school that’s been one of CPS’s success stories for the last few decades.
A few years back their boys’ basketball team—led by Michael “Juice” Thompson, who went on to star at Northwestern—gave powerhouses Simeon and Young a run for their money.
It sounds great, except that I’m not quite sure what it means, and I don’t think the mayor does either.
There is, of course, the magic of the IB name. Apparently, the mayor is convinced that adding the IB brand name to Lincoln Park High will convince more middle-class north-side parents to send their kids there, even though many of them were already sending their kids there.
One teacher who had to reapply was Deborah Ditkowsky, a chemistry teacher with more than 20 years in the system. Ditkowsky says that for almost all her career, she’d been rated excellent or superior. But last year, Lincoln Park principal Michael Boraz lowered her to satisfactory, in part, she says, because they had a few disagreements on school policy. “I can be blunt,” she says. “I’m not what you would call a wimp.”
