As Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman satisfies the Pilsen neighborhood’s school inequity issue, he faces continued pressure from families and leaders in University Village.

For more than a year residents, community leaders and two aldermen say they have worked to create and offer CPS a solution to the lack of choice in neighborhood schools.

Their problem: The John M. Smyth Elementary School, to which their children are assigned, is not a good enough for some parents in University Village and the surrounding area. Families and statistics say Smyth performs poorly, 98 percent African-American and full of economically challenged students. Aldermen say the community is “underserved” by Smyth.

Their Solution: At a cost of approximately $5 million, expand the nearby award-winning Andrew Jackson Language Academy and its racially diverse, high-scoring programs into a “closed” school on West Fillmore Street and create neighborhood school boundaries to match Smyth’s current lines, opening more seats for neighborhood children.

Residents say access to a good school is paramount to the neighborhood’s success as a tax base for the city and eventually, when done, Roosevelt Square as a viable community of 2,400 mixed-income homes.

With the issue brewing in both of their wards, Aldermen Robert Fioretti (2nd) and Danny Solis (25th) sent a letter to Huberman in late August supporting the Jackson expansion and asking for regional gifted center at Smyth, thereby boosting the school’s socioeconomic stats, racial diversity and test scores by drawing some of the city’s total population of young gifted students into Smyth. They asked for the issue to go before the Chicago Board of Education in September.

On Oct. 9, Fioretti said the issue must get before the Chicago Board of Education in October if the solution was to be enacted by the start of the 2011 school year. Solis, who had Huberman’s ear during winning negotiations with Whittier School parents, has been somewhat publicly mum on the University Village issue since late August.

Smyth Principal Ron Whitmore will not take questions. Smyth Local School Council Chairman Tim Jefferson said he had never heard of Fioretti and Solis’ attempt to win a regional gifted center for the school.

CPS will not commit to putting the proposed Jackson School expansion on the Chicago Board of Education’s Oct. 27 agenda. A spokesman would only say, “If and when a proposal is to be brought before the board that will be noted as part of the public posting that occurs before a board meeting.”

Given the current apparent lack of communication between interested parties The Board of Education should attempt to move the discussion out of back rooms and into an on-the-record public debate about providing access to good education at the beginning of a child’s academic life.

The Board of Education should include a public hearing on the matter next week then act prudently upon all testimony and evidence.