WHEREAS, a group of Chicago parents and community organizers called the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School and on Sept. 19 ended a 34-day hunger strike which had demanded that the city reopen a shuttered neighborhood high school as an open-enrollment high school focused on green technology and global leadership; and

WHEREAS, the hunger strike, which began with 12 participants and now includes 15, has drawn national attention and broad support because it pushes back against the trend in many cities of closing or privatizing schools against a community’s wishes; and

WHEREAS, school closings and privatization without community engagement are often concentrated in poor communities of color, and Dyett is the last open-enrollment neighborhood high school in Bronzeville, a predominantly low-income African American neighborhood on Chicago’s south side; and

WHEREAS, Dyett High School was slated to close after the 2014-15 school year, but community opposition led city school officials to announce this year they would consider proposals for reopening it, including the Dyett coalition’s proposal to make it an open-enrollment high school focused on global leadership and green technology; and

WHEREAS, parents and community organizers launched the hunger strike after the school district postponed a public hearing this summer on the high school; and

WHEREAS, in response to publicity around the hunger strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and school officials announced that they would reopen Dyett as an arts high school, a decision that flies in the face of the coalition’s call for a green-technology high school and which was made without consultation with the  coalition; and

WHEREAS, the national Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools on Sept. 10 published an open letter by 68 education organizations and labor unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, that calls on Chicago’s mayor to support an emphasis on green technology at the school and to engage with coalition members in designing the school’s curriculum and hiring a principal; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the United Federation of Teachers stands in support of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School’s call for the community to have a voice in the future of their neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school; and

RESOLVED, that the UFT also supports the call by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools for Mayor Emanuel to work with the coalition in decisions on the future focus, leadership and curriculum of Dyett High School.