About Us

Unite For Our Schools — Albany Park advocates for strong, fully resourced neighborhood schools at every grade level in and around our northwest Chicago community, empowering families to invest in neighborhood schools from pre-K through high school graduation. We support policies that reverse historic disinvestment in our community and align educational resources with real community need.

Our Mission

We believe:

• Every family deserves the option to choose a stable, fully-resourced neighborhood school.
• Albany Park’s linguistic and cultural diversity, including multilingual families and English-language learners, must be reflected in and served by our schools.
• Growing neighborhood schools deserve resources, not restrictions. Rising enrollment reflects success, and the needs of growing neighborhood schools should be prioritized.
• Historic disinvestment in Albany Park — as well as structural racism in the allocation of educational opportunities — must be acknowledged, rejected, and reversed.
• Decision-making processes must feature community engagement in a way that’s genuine, transparent, and timely — not performative.
• The unique needs of vulnerable student populations — including those with low family income, recent migrants, and diverse learners — must be acknowledged and served by our schools.
• Everyone benefits — students, families, schools, the environment, and the larger community — when families invest and enroll in neighborhood schools.

The History

According to the University of Chicago, Albany Park has been both a community of immigrants and beset by disinvestment since the 1970s. Serving as a vital port for Latin American and Asian immigrants in particular, Albany Park is considered to be one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse areas in the city, with the 60625 ZIP code known as one of the most diverse areas in the country.

As populations increased here, Chicago Publish Schools have had several waves of reactions to accomodating growing numbers of students in neighborhood schools. In the early 2000s, CPS responded to overcrowding at Haugan Elementary by implementing controlled enrollment and building a new school a block away for Haugan students. Even though an advisory committee recommended Haugan’s middle school classes move into the new space, CPS gave it to ASPIRA Charter. As a result, Haugan’s middle schoolers had to walk a mile and cross three major streets to attend Marshall Middle. And then that school closed, so CPS shunted those same middle schoolers off to Roosevelt high school before allowing Haugan to bring them back home.

With ASPIRA’s financial collapse, the space that was originally built to serve Haugan’s students is open again. And once again, overcrowding threatens the Haugan community. Now, CPS has a second chance to make good on its promise to support the growth of this beloved neighborhood school.

CPS has suggested controlled enrollment is a solution for Haugan’s future, but we’ve been here before. Having experienced it in the 1990s and early 2000s, we know “controlled enrollment” is a farce. The only entity that has control under this scheme is CPS. For everyone else, controlled enrollment equals chaos. It means students who enroll at Haugan won’t know where they’ll attend school. It means families have to figure out how they’re going to get their kids to and from two or three different schools every day. It means teachers and staff who work to build connections can’t look these children and parents in the eye and say “I’ll be here for you.” Controlled enrollment prevents us from building on Haugan’s strength and positive reputation as a great neighborhood school. Controlled enrollment punishes Haugan for its own success. 

If ASPIRA’s monumental mismanagement has taught us anything, it’s that we need to invest in a model that works. Haugan is a prime example. Even in the early 2000s, when our enrollment was nearly 50% higher than capacity, families kept choosing to send their children to this beloved, growing school. Haugan’s earned its reputation as a caring, connected community by welcoming and educating Latinx children and other newcomers. Despite space constraints, it’s enrolling a higher percentage of neighborhood families, expanding programming and making great strides to launching its dual-language program. More and more families see Haugan as their first choice school rather than lottery based school. CPS’s own Family and Community Engagement officials identify Haugan as a model for welcoming and caring for families and children. Rather than constraining or dividing this school, CPS should expand and replicate it.