Chicago Public Schools cannot take over and shut down Urban Prep Academies, a highly successful, but controversy-bitten pair of all-male Chicago charter high schools, after a judge ruled CPS violated a state law forbidding public school closures in Chicago until early 2025.
On July 24, Cook County Judge Anna Loftus issued a permanent injunction, ordering CPS to allow Urban Prep to continue operating under its existing charter, until a new one can be negotiated to cover the 2023-2024 school year. The judge gave both sides until the end of the first semester of the new school year to reach an agreement that will be valid for at least one more year.
CPS immediately filed notice it will appeal Loftus’ ruling, according to court records.
In her ruling, Loftus recognized the controversies that have engulfed Urban Prep and its leadership in recent years, and which CPS cited as justification for its attempt to seize control of the schools.
But the judge said it is clear CPS violated a state law forbidding any Chicago schools under the control of the Chicago Board of Education from being closed until at least January 2025. Further, she said, refusing to order CPS to renew Urban Prep’s charter could effectively result in chaos surrounding the closure of Urban Prep’s schools in Chicago’s Bronzeville and Englewood neighborhoods, which could prove disastrous for Urban Prep’s students and for their communities.
“… The Court must also consider the public health and safety impact of imposing or not imposing an injunction,” Loftus wrote in her July 24 order. “Here, that impact concerns the health and welfare of the Urban Prep students and community members. The people who will most immediately feel the impact of the Court’s decision are the students.
“… The lack of operating high schools in the Bronzeville and Englewood communities (even if for a limited period) will cause damage to the health of the local communities by breaking the bonds formed, destroying a place of gathering, and leaving the formerly vibrant buildings shuttered.
“Finally, the disruption caused by the failure to open the schools at the start of the 2023-2024 school year may result in the loss of some students who never return to high school which will impact their ability to attend college if they so choose, or otherwise will impact their future success in life.”
The ruling represents a significant victory for the leadership of Urban Prep in the running legal fight for control of the South Side high schools in the upcoming school year.
Administrators at Urban Prep filed suit in April, accusing CPS of violating state law by seeking to effectively seize control of the charter schools.
In that complaint, Urban Prep’s leaders assert Illinois state law does not allow the Chicago Board of Education to simply evict the leadership of the charter schools and then essentially make it just another CPS school.
In October 2022, under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the Chicago Board of Education voted not to renew Urban Prep’s charter. In justifying that decision, the CPS board accused Urban Prep’s leadership of mismanaging the charter schools’ finances and of failing to property respond to accusations of sexual misconduct against Urban Preps’ former CEO and founder, Timothy King.
King resigned in August 2021, after the CPS Inspector General issued a report purportedly corroborating accusations against King by a former Urban Prep student and employee. King also sued CPS, asserting the investigation was a sham, conducted purely to railroad him out of his position and justify the eventual CPS takeover of the Urban Prep schools. That lawsuit remains pending.
King founded Urban Prep in 2003, growing the network of charter high schools to three campuses. The Urban Prep curriculum and programs have been nationally recognized for success in helping young males, predominantly from the Black communities on Chicago’s South Side, to succeed academically. Urban Prep has been consistently recognized for sending 100% of its students to college.
As of 2022, Urban Prep had about 1,500 students. Its high schools in Englewood and Bronzeville were chartered through CPS.
CPS indicated it would combine those two campuses into a single school under direct CPS control.
In mid-June, Loftus had initially denied Urban Prep’s request for an injunction, appearing to allow CPS to continue with its plans to remove Urban Prep’s charter, strip it of funding, and reenroll all of its students in a new Bronzeville-Englewood High School, operating as one high school, but in both of Urban Prep’s campuses.
Urban Prep, however, appealed to the Illinois First District Appellate Court, which reversed Loftus’ ruling and granted Urban Prep’s request for a temporary restraining order. That order directed CPS to put a hold on the takeover of Urban Prep until Urban Prep’s court challenge is played out.
Since then, Urban Prep has argued in court that CPS has "brazenly" ignored that ruling, as CPS has asserted the appellate court never ordered CPS to grant or renew Urban Prep’s charter.
In her new order, however, Loftus did just that.
Loftus centered her decision on the Illinois state law enacted to create a new elected Chicago Board of Education. To this point, the school board was appointed by the mayor.
As part of that law, state lawmakers agreed to include a moratorium on any efforts by the present Board of Education to close public schools in Chicago until the new school board can be elected and seated.
In its filings, Urban Prep asserted that moratorium should also cover any efforts to close charter schools.
CPS, however, asserted it wasn’t actually closing any schools. It was merely removing Urban Prep’s charter, and transferring control of the schools to CPS.
Loftus sided with Urban Prep on the question. The judge said the law does not appear to draw any distinction between public schools operated directly by CPS and schools operating under a charter granted by CPS and Illinois school officials.
Loftus said CPS’ actions to take control at Urban Prep amount to an illegal school closure, under the state’s longstanding definitions, in large part because Urban Prep’s former students are being disenrolled from Urban Prep and reenrolled at a “receiver school,” CPS’ proposed new Bronzeville-Englewood High School.
“There is no indication within (state law) that ‘school closing’ or ‘consolidation’ only occurs when a former school building is shuttered,” Loftus wrote. “There is no indication in the plain language of the statute or the dictionary definitions that a receiving school must be already existing and housed in a separate building. If the intent of the legislature in enacting the moratorium was to prevent the shuttering of a school building, requiring students to leave their communities in order to attend a school in a different location, that intent is not clear from the plain text of the moratorium provision or (Illinois school law) definitions.”
Urban Prep has been represented in the action by attorneys Eric Grodksy and Eric B. Bernard, of the firm of Petrarca Gleason Boyle & Izzo, of Flossmoor.