Student protests over budget cuts have deep roots

On a chilly day in early November, yellow caution tape stretches across entrances to the Thompson Center, a sign of the action to come. By 4 p.m., some 100 Chicago Public Schools students have gathered outside, and several hundred more are heading their way from Randolph and Clark.

“Save our schools, save our teachers” they chant. “People over profits” and “Where’s the funds” they demand in hand-scrawled signs.

Eventually 600 to 800 strong, according to organizers’ estimates, the students begin circling the massive building to protest the threatened layoff of thousands of CPS teachers and the elimination of school programs. This protest, held Nov. 6 by students from mainly selective-enrollment schools, is one of the biggest that CPS students have conducted in a bid to protect already dwindling resources at their schools.

On Oct. 5, students from Roosevelt, Foreman and Schurz high schools held a walkout on Roosevelt’s grounds.

On Oct. 28, Walter Payton College Prep senior Matthew Mata helped stage a “study-in” outside CPS headquarters during the School Board meeting.

On Oct. 29, 15 students and staff from Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Englewood marched to a nearby Bank of America branch in protest of so-called toxic swaps that have drained money from their schools.

On Nov. 13, students held another massive rally, roughly the same size as the one a week earlier, at the Thompson Center.

The Nov. 6 protest was born largely out of a Facebook discussion among several students from selective-enrollment high schools, including Jones junior Darcy Palder and Payton senior Matthew Mata.

“You don’t realize how much you love something until it’s kind of out of our reach,” Palder said at the rally. “And when I started realizing that we might not have those special classes that we love or those teachers who have helped us so much, I realized that we needed to do something.”

These rallies and study-ins are the latest in a long history of student activism in Chicago.

http://catalyst-chicago.org/2015/11/student-protests-over-budget-cuts-have-deep-roots/