After months of intense fighting to save the Near West Side’s Crane High School, one plan to keep the school open may be getting some traction.

The pitch is to keep Crane alive by shifting its mission, changing from a high school that’s solely neighborhood-focused to one that’s focused on training students for jobs in the medical industry.

But Chicago Public Schools officials haven't officially come out in favor of the idea yet, and the school board is still set to vote on whether or not to close the school at its meeting this Wednesday.

The idea was pitched in a meeting between CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, State Sen. Annazette Collins (5th), and representatives from a group of teachers and community members dubbing itself the Crane Coalition.

According to Collins, who took credit for the idea, Brizard was interested in the proposal and wanted to look at it more closely.

“He was proposing making it exclusively medical,” she said.

Collins first pitched the idea at a press conference Friday, Feb. 10 in front of the school. The idea sprang from Malcolm X College taking a similar tactic, beefing up its medical programming to take advantage of the nearby Illinois Medical District and its need for technicians.

“Why not take this opportunity to teach kids in low income neighborhoods how to be EMTs?” Collins said. “In this case, I think it’s a great opportunity because of where Malcolm X is and what they’re doing.”

Collins said that the plan from the Crane Coalition to turn the school around with the help of a program called Strategic Learning Initiatives was an interesting idea, ultimately a bigger change needed to be made at the school.

“If you were going to turn the school around, you would have done it already,” Collins said. “The local attendance has been so low, especially since they tore down the projects. You have to have programs to attract kids from around the city.”

Stacy Davis Gates, director of political activities for the Chicago Teachers Union, said the union is “cautiously optimistic” about the proposal.

“It’s an idea that’s authentically community-based,” Davis Gates said. “When legislators are engaged in this process, things happen.”

The union has pushed to keep the school alive as a neighborhood school instead of phasing it out over the next four years, as CPS initially proposed. Davis Gates acknowledged that something needs to change, but said that the school should look carefully at how the change would be executed before signing on to it.

“No one thinks it should remain in its current state,” she said. “The issue is, what’s the template for this change? Thinking about this from the perspective of an educator, right now, you have this project that they’re working on, but without a rubric.”

The Chicago Board of Education is still scheduled to vote on Crane’s phase out this Wednesday, Feb. 22.

Chicago Public Schools spokesman Frank Shuftan emphasized Friday evening that the phase out was still on the agenda for the board meeting, but added that the board was looking closely at the proposal.

"The board is conducting a thorough analysis of the Crane alternative plan that will be completed prior to the board meeting," he wrote in an email.

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By hannah from near west side, across from Crane
Posted: 02/24/2012 9:56 AM

This is a great compromise - and actually will develop career-minded students! Very impressed with the collaboration of the neighborhood to feed these students directly into Malcolm X (will it be renamed to have a more medical sounding name?) ---> Medical District professionals. This will be a talented pool of health professionals, and will only continue to develop and enhance this neighborhood