OAKLAND — Dyett High School students said Monday that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office has not come through with the school improvements promised to the 11 protesters arrested at City Hall in September.
Students said they received no preparation for the ACT test coming up in two weeks, remain locked out of the gym and must still take physical education online.
“Really? Who takes gym online?” said Nefateria Denton, one of the 13 seniors at the school at 555 E. 51st St. “Go up to the North Side, they don’t take gym online.”
Denton and other students said they still can’t use the front door to the school and aren’t getting help applying for college and financial aid.
The Mayor’s Office and Chicago Public Schools said on Sept. 23 they would right those problems and other complaints by protesters who chained themselves to a statue in City Hall.
“This stuff could be done with a phone call,” said Jitu Brown, an organizer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization who was one of the 11 arrested.
A representative from the Mayor’s Office declined to comment.
CPS, which announced in 2012 it would phase out Dyett at the end of the 2014-15 school year, did not respond to requests for comment.
Students said several of the things protesters demanded have materialized, including planning for a senior prom and senior luncheon and a visit to Northern Illinois University, with nine more college trips planned.
Investigators from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights noted these and other complaints at a Monday night forum on Dyett at First Unitarian Church, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave.
The department in August opened an investigation into whether students at Dyett and Mollison Elementary were being denied equal access to education.
The two investigators declined to comment on the progress of the case.
The complaint filed by parents and students at the schools asked the Department of Education to keep Dyett open, reopen Overton Elementary School and put a halt to further school actions.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
