- Scott Stewart/Sun-Times
- A photo of 1230 N. Larabee Street taken in 2010, near the proposed site of Barack Obama College Prep
When the City Council gets around to holding hearings on the controversial topic of race and selective enrollment high schools, aldermen might want to hear from Rob Paral, aka Chicago Data Guy.
The mayor’s proposal has managed to upset people all over the city for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that it makes no sense to build new schools when you don’t have enough operational dollars to adequately fund the existing ones.
This area includes Lincoln Park, the Gold Coast, the Loop, and the near-north and near-west sides.
Then things changed. In particular, the CHA allowed the Cabrini-Green population to fall through attrition. Then officials used federal funds to move the people out and demolish most of Cabrini-Green. Then they closed several schools, because population had fallen.
Those tracts are also predominantly white, especially in contrast to the areas around some of the other selective enrollment schools. For instance, the census tracts around Brooks high, on the far-south side, is 89.7 percent black.
Which is just sort of how it goes around here.
