CHICAGO — A blog that grew into the go-to conversation hub for parents of kids in Chicago Public Schools is facing a fork in the road.
CPS Obsessed got its start nine years ago when Rebecca Labowitz, of Bowmanville, was researching and applying to schools as her son prepared for kindergarten. She works in research, she said, and she tends to "approach things by over-researching."
That habit paid off for CPS Obsessed: Labowitz would share information about school rankings, changes in the district and reminded people when to send out applications, among other things. Blogging was just becoming popular, Labowitz said, and CPS' website wasn't "that good" at the time.
CPS Obsessed became an online meeting spot for parents who could read Labowitz's musings and research, ask questions and talk with other moms and dads around the city. Posts garnered hundreds — some even thousands — of comments.
The blog started going viral around the time that notification letters went out, Labowitz said.
It was “a place where you can discuss this with other parents, and that didn’t exist at the time,” Labowitz said.
But Labowitz's sons was among the students who received high school decision letters this week, marking an end to her own focus on elementary schools in the district. She's not yet sure what's that means for CPS Obsessed's future.
“I’ve got this little community. It’s hard to let that go, but it’s difficult for me to keep up with all the elementary stuff,” Labowitz said. She wants to focus on her son's future in high school, she said, and it will be "difficult" for her to keep up with elementary school information.
“I’m not totally sure what’s going to happen yet,” she said.
For those who worry they'll miss Labowitz's insight, she suggested they check out CPS' website. It has improved in the years since CPS Obsessed started, Labowitz said, and it's now a "good resource for all kinds of information" for parents.
And parents should also speak to other parents — friends of friends, people on the playground — as Labowitz did for her blog to get the information they need about schools. It's become easier to do that with social media, she said.
“Literally, every place I went I would ask [parents] where their kids go to school,” Labowitz said.
Parents should also take a "good look" at their neighborhood school when trying to figure out where to send their kids, Labowitz said. They could find an "undiscovered gem" in their area, she said, and they should cast a wide net and not pin their hopes to only one or two schools.
“It can feel like there’s not a lot of choices if you’re setting only a narrow net of schools for yourself,” but really there are "a lot of options," Labowitz said.
