Mayor Emanuel, schools chief spread back-to-school message
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND ROSALIND ROSSI Staff Reporters August 2, 2011 3:38PM
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard walk towards a press confrence after going door to door to promote student attendance on the first day of the CPS school year in the 7800 block of Throop. Tuesday, August 2, 2011 | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
Updated: November 16, 2011 1:21AM
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and new Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard rang a half dozen doorbells in Auburn-Gresham on Tuesday to boost opening day school attendance as Brizard backed away from the idea of asking teachers to make house calls.
Brizard raised eyebrows in June when he told reporters he wanted to follow the lead of the United Neighborhood Organization’s network of charter schools by asking teachers to pay two “home visits” each year to build “a much better connection between the home and the school.”
“Four hundred thousand kids in CPS, 25,000 teachers. If you count principals, assistant principals, office staff — if we each took ten kids and promised to visit one a month, can you imagine? We could do it, too … I know it’s possible,” he said then.
At the time, Brizard bristled when asked whether he considered it safe to send teachers into crime-ridden Chicago neighborhoods.
“Our kids go there every single day, so why not?” he said. “As a teacher, I visited schools. I visited homes. I worked in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It was not a cupcake neighborhood. If our kids go there every single day, why shouldn’t our adults be there, too?”
On Tuesday, Brizard changed his tune.
Asked whether he still intends to ask teachers to make “house calls,” Brizard said, “I never pushed that. That was not our push. The push is to make sure schools connect with families. That was my main message.”
The house calls made by the mayor and Brizard — with reporters and television cameras in tow — were aimed at reminding parents and students about the first day of school. It’s Monday for early start schools on “Track E” and Sept. 6 for everybody else.
They rang six doorbells, three of which had Chicago Public School students in the house. One house had grandparents. Two had homeowners without kids who nevertheless committed to doing their part to boost opening day attendance.
At 7812 S. Throop, senior citizen Donald Hart told Emanuel he goes on his front stoop every morning and prays that kids will get to school safely.
That prompted the mayor to say that while Hart was on his stoop for his daily prayers, he might also urge any neighborhood kids he sees to get to school on time on opening day.
Emanuel and Brizard also rang the doorbell at a house with a sticker on the window that read, “Don’t Shoot. I Want to Grow Up.”
At another house on that same block, kids were home alone and refused to answer the door. So, the mayor talked to the kids through a screen on the front window and asked what books they were reading this summer.
In high truant areas, the Chicago Public Schools hope to knock on the doors of 40,000 families before the opening bell rings.
It’s all part of an aggressive back-to-school campaign that blends social media and guerilla marketing to increase attendance.
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