http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/23/us-usa-education-chicago-vote-idUKBRE94L15P20130523
The real reasons behind these closings are not being shared, of course.
Logically, richer areas have better parental involvement and better buildings, etc. Taxes pay for schools. In very poor areas, many people are not paying taxes and, therefore, the school systems suffer.
If the majority of a population is on welfare, the schools will suffer.
The problem is the larger infrastructure of the lack of jobs, and the lack of the will to work.
Until the end of 2010, I worked for several years with at-risk-students. These students were usually Latino and Black minority students who were the first in their families to try to get a higher education. Some were genuilly trying to break out of the generational mode of poverty and even violence.
Some were not. Some girls got pregnant merely to stay on housing benefit. When the time for that gift ran out, they would get pregnant again. This is what their moms and grandmothers did.
Some were using grant money, sent to them, rather than the college, for drugs. They did not care if they had to pay back that money or could not sign up again for courses until their debt was paid. They would take the 5000 dollars and disappear.
Some, mostly the Latino girls, were thankfully ambitious, competitive and trying to break out of poverty. However, the culture fought against them, such as families demanding they get married and have children and be on welfare. Generations of lifestyles are hard to change.
Those who succeeded in breaking out of the chains of poverty moved out of their neighborhoods, sometimes against their families' selfish wishes, got jobs, and did, in turn, send money back to their families. But, their new jobs were not in the failing neighborhoods, where their old schools suffered from the lack of tax money and safe education.
Increasingly, teachers no longer wanted to work in dangerous areas. Can you blame them? I was threatened more than once even at the college level by violent students, who were coming out of backgrounds of family prostitution and the slavery of welfare.
The reasons are not merely money, but the conversion of minds and hearts. Most of the youth I worked with were not church-goers or even Christian. Some bragged that they had had four abortions. Some were Christians and they shared with me that they felt the pain of the split in the communities. There was little discussion between the Obama blacks and the Evangelical blacks, for instance.
To save schools in dying neighborhoods is a complicated matter. Jobs must be created and families strengthened to the point where parents support their children's desires for a better life. Only Christ can change this type of slavery to sin and poverty. Only evangelization, and not politics, will move the hearts of those who have lost their communities.
Too many Catholics, including priests and seminarians in America, think in terms of politics solving the problems of our cities. No. Only Christ can solve these huge problems.
Until we really evangelize the inner cities, schools will close and neighborhoods will dissolve into gang centers where no one is safe. I have seen this happen. I lived in Illinois and Iowa, and saw this happening in those two states.
