Date: Thursday, August 9, 2018 to Sunday, August 19, 2018

School closures are happening in many black and brown neighborhoods across our country. This is often an integral step before a city’s privatizing its education via charter schools, in the frame of ‘choice’.

In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education (appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) announced that it would close 49 public schools in what was the largest mass school closure in United States history. The board’s decision sparked heated criticism, especially the inequity of which schools were being closed: poor, Latino and Black neighborhood schools. The Chicago Board of Education voted to phase out Walter H Dyett High School due to poor academic performance in 2012, and closed the school in June 2015.

A hunger strike led by 12 people lasted for 34 days, when the decision to re-open it was finally reached.

Though this may seem distant to Vermont, this is part of a larger cultural trend/agenda that is the eroding and dismantling of what is a public good.

COST: $1900

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: May 15