Community Support for Haugan

For the past year, the Albany Park community has been speaking before Board of Education and local school council meetings, sharing concerns with the media and meeting with elected officials. Sadly, much of this activity goes unnoticed if you’re not looking for it.

That’s why Unite for Our Schools — Albany Park decided to share a selection of letters and pleas for assistance here on our website. If you would like to add your own letter to this list, please get in touch with our communications director at Meg@ladyinabox.com.

For background and further context, here’s the letter that our LSC chairpersons sent to Acting Chief Portfolio Officer for Chicago Public Schools Conrad Timbers-Ausar in support of Haugan Principal Heather Smith’s second colocation request, submitted earlier this month:

Dear Chief Timbers-Ausar and the Office of Portfolio Management,

On behalf of the Haugan Elementary Local School Counsel, we are writing in support of Principal Smith’s formal request for a school action for the upcoming 2027-2028 school year. She proposes the co-location of up to 300 Haugan middle school students into the vacant classroom space at 3729 W. Leland (“the Leland Building”) formerly occupied by Aspira Haugan Charter School, with North River Elementary.

This is our second year making this request. Please see our request from last fall, attached as Exhibit A. CPS denied our first request and gave a public-facing explanation that, technically, Haugan isn’t actually crowded. Ten days earlier, on November 20, 2025, Chief Timber-Ausar provided a memo of explanation to the board (“the Memo”) which provided detailed justifications for denial. See Memo, attached as Exhibit B. This memo was concealed from our community for several months. Page 5 of the Memo states that Haugan isn’t crowded and “CPS typically explores root causes and non-colocation options before proposing such measures.”

Over the past year, we have thoroughly explored the root causes of our crowding, which are multi-faceted and set forth within Ms. Smith’s letter. However, the primary “root cause” of our crowding is simple - over at least the past 30 years, CPS has allocated the Haugan attendance area grossly insufficient neighborhood school seats for the number of zoned students. The Leland Building was constructed to correct this mismatch and remains the only realistic option to do so. Haugan’s co-location request must be considered with this reality in mind.

We note from the outset, and will discuss in greater detail herein, that this process has been extremely discouraging so far. Starting in late 2021, when we were first notified of North River’s desire to co-locate with Aspira, CPS leaders have given advice and taken actions that neither serve the Haugan community nor allows the broader Albany Park a voice in critical community decisions. For instance, last year we were advised to submit a narrowly focused co-location request that focused only on the immediate crowding issue and identified solution and not on the history and purpose of the Leland Building, how North River fits the Albany Park and CPS school portfolio, or input from the broader community. We followed this advice and then had no opportunity to rebut the justifications within the memo, many of which we do not agree with. We will fully do so here.

Our views herein are based on the expressed wishes of our school community, and broader Albany Park community, to the extent we’ve been able to gather input. All statements are supported by first-hand witness accounts and we can provide testimony and/or affidavits as necessary (with the exception that no North River community members are willing to go “on the record” about these topics).

Planning for the Future

We will not have the benefit of “20th Day” numbers before submitting this request as Ms. Smith will be on medical leave during the latter part of September. As of today, our numbers are slightly lower than last year. We have approximately 979 students, approximately 83 fewer than at the end of last year, an approximately 8% drop. As set forth within Ms. Smith’s colocation letter request, based on our own experience and careful analyses by demographer Denali Dasgupta and utilization analyst Jeanne Marie Olson, we believe this dip in enrollment is temporary, and does not resolve our space constraints. We still predict that ultimately our enrollment will grow. We maintain that it is critical to the short and long-term health of our school and neighborhood that Haugan is allocated space in the Leland building to continue providing high-quality educational services to all students who choose to attend their neighborhood school.

Our Proposed Solution: Co-location of Haugan Middle School Grades

We carefully considered various types of school action proposals, as outlined in the presentations by then-Portolio Chief Carmona in 2025. As set forth in more detail below, despite our best efforts, we have been unable to substantively discuss agreed solutions with North River. We remain respectful neighbors of North River. We support its place in our community and welcome collaboration. In absence of an identified joint solution, we propose co-location which would both resolve Haugan’s space issues, and allow North River to continue to function exactly as it has. We propose co-location for the reasons set forth in Ms. Smith’s letter and because CPS officials informed us cannot unilaterally propose solutions that affect North River’s structure such as North River becoming the neighborhood middle school and Haugan becoming the neighborhood PK - 5 school. That said, we do want to make CPS, and North River aware that we do not believe co-location is the only workable option.

Alternatives to Permanent Co-location

We believe that schools are a community resource and that the community should have a voice in how to best use vacant school space. To that end we have included data from a survey Haugan community members conducted last fall. This survey considered a wide range of options and a summary of the results is attached as Exhibit C. The survey results show that the community is open to a variety of solutions, but not unfettered expansion of North River’s citywide lottery-based program. The survey respondents are primarily although not exclusively from the Haugan community. We attempted to survey the community more broadly but shortly thereafter a CPS official told us to stop because gathering community input was CPS’s job. Since then, and despite additional promises this past spring to “let the community decide,” CPS has made no efforts to solicit broad community input about use of the vacant Leland building space, solutions for Haugan’s space constraints, or North River’s expansion plans. Based on the data we’ve gathered to date, the Haugan Community and the broader Albany Park community, remain open to a variety of solutions to provide adequate neighborhood school space to all comers in Albany Park.

Other potential solutions:

• North River becomes the neighborhood middle school and Haugan the neighborhood PK - 5 school, with teachers and students transferring to the other school if their school no longer serves their grade (or a grade the staff is licensed to serve). Each school could also serve students outside the attendance zone if space permits.
• North River moves out of the Leland building into a vacant CPS-owned building with room for it to double its citywide program, Haugan uses the entire Leland Building as a second campus CPS could consider giving North River one of the several CPS owned charter buildings that closed after the 2025-2026 school year. Haugan could also serve students outside the attendance zone if space permits.
• North River becomes a neighborhood PK-8 school and Haugan’s attendance boundaries are adjusted so that part of its attendance zone is served by North River. Each school could also serve students outside the attendance zone if space permits. (That said, the buildings are so close together there is no obvious way to split the attendance boundaries.)
• Temporary co-location on a year-to-year basis to allow time for greater community input into the best long-term solution and opportunity for the Haugan and North River communities to get to know each other and collaborate toward a mutually beneficial long-term solution.
• We remain more than willing to work out a viable long-term solution with North River like the alternatives listed above. However, our students and staff cannot wait any longer and co-location is the best and only solution that we are permitted to propose unilaterally.

Our Response to CPS and North River’s Concerns

As set forth above, last fall Portfolio Chief Timbers shared the Memo (Exhibit B) with the Board of Education which expressed the advantages and disadvantages CPS had identified about granting or denying our proposal. This memo also included a summary of results from surveys conducted by CPS solely of Haugan and North River parents, staff, and students. CPS’s surveys were geared only toward persons directly affiliated with either school, not other community members, and did not allow feedback into any other options besides colocation (including North River’s expansion plan). Based on the memo and survey results, we wish to address each potential concern.

Haugan’s Capacity

As set forth within Ms. Smith’s colocation request, we are in fact severely space constrained, despite CPS’s utilization data. “But Haugan Isn’t Crowded” CPS’s primary justification for denying our request, (and its only public justification) was its determination that Haugan was not crowded. Since the denial, we obtained a thorough analysis of our space issues by researcher Jeanne Marie Olson.

Ms. Olson determined that we are in fact space constrained, and that neighborhood schools, especially neighborhood schools like Haugan with large bilingual and special education populations, are extremely vulnerable to being crowded in reality, if not on paper. The exact challenges we described above are predicted by her analysis, as we simply cannot create equal even classes of 25, 28, or 30.

As a neighborhood school we must take all comers. Ms. Olson recommends that the maximum capacity for schools like ours be adjusted down to provide a cushion and avoid violating our ethical and legal obligations to Special Education and English Language Learner students, among others. See Olson analyses. Despite the on-paper math, we are crowded, and there are no reasonable solutions we can implement within our school to address our current crowding nor prevent future crowding.

Haugan’s Growth Trajectory

While stating in one breath that we are not crowded, the Memo and CPS’s subsequent communications to us were focused on constraining our growth. We believe that any efforts by CPS to constrain our growth are unacceptable given the mandates of the CPS strategic plan, the fact that we enroll less than 60% of zoned students, and available space in the Leland building. Here are some glaring examples:

• In a post-denial meeting, a CPS official suggested that we eliminate a class in our (fully enrolled) PK program. We have four sections of PK4 and always at least 4 sections of Kindergarten. PK classes are mandated to be smaller than Kindergarten classes, so we already have fewer PK slots than anticipated kindergarten enrollees. As set forth in our prior application, PK is both a feeder program for our kindergarten and a critical educational building block for our vulnerable populations. CPS Early Learning leadership opposes any reduction to our PK program. We thus declined the suggestion to reduce our PK, and, as described just below, the CPS official told us that we “could not expect to both keep all our preschool classrooms and get dual language” (because dual language designation might encourage additional students to enroll at Haugan). We should not have to choose between educating our youngest learners and the most appropriate BIL curriculum for our ESL students.
• Regarding our bilingual learners, the stakes, and what we lose by being crowded, were made starkly clear this February. After years of consideration, we determined that pursuing dual language designation is in the best interests of our English Language learners, and applied for this designation starting in fall 2024. CPS approved our application for an incubation process in Spring 2025, but refused to renew this approval in Spring 2026, just days after the above-described meeting. In effect, vulnerable students are being denied the most appropriate bilingual education because we are crowded, and because we are unwilling to remove other students from our school.
• The memo also noted that the percentage of zoned students choosing our school had risen to 59% of students during the 2025-2026 school year. It cited as a concern [with granting our request] that “expanding Haugan’s capacity could further increase in-boundary enrollment, causing additional capacity constraints on both Haugan and North River” and “co-location may hinder North River’s ability to recruit from the Albany Park community. This creates a vicious cycle that hurts North River’s enrollment by potentially driving more growth to Haugan and other surrounding schools that lack capacity.” This line of thinking, that Haugan should discourage additional enrollment, is antithetical to the CPS 2025-2029 Strategic Plan, “Together We Rise,” which governs all schools and the BOE. The Strategic plan mandates prioritization of resources in historically disadvantaged neighborhood schools so that every family can rely on their neighborhood school as a fully resourced choice. Its requirements are both key in the analysis of proper next steps here, and fully applicable to Haugan’s situation. As set forth below, Haugan’s treatment over the past 22 years provides an egregious example of the harm which the Strategic Plan is designed to remedy and correct going forward. Under the CPS strategic plan, a growing neighborhood school should be celebrated and given adequate space, not told it cannot and should not grow.

Root Causes of Space Constraints

As noted upfront, the Memo states that Haugan isn’t crowded and “CPS typically explores root causes and non-colocation options before proposing such measures.” And here, the root cases are clear - Haugan lacks capacity to serve a reasonable number of its zoned students. Unless it actively deters students from enrolling, crowding and lack of room to grow is utterly predictable.

Looking at CPS TARANTULA data (which tracks, among other things, how many students reside in CPS schools’ attendance areas and the percentages who attend each neighborhood school) alongside facility space utilization data, Haugan is at the bottom 5% of all CPS schools in terms of neighborhood school seats available per number of zoned students. Haugan’s attendance area zone has approximately 1700 students but can only accommodate about 1000 (ideally less, as explained by Ms. Olson’s analysis). See TARANTULA data for 2025-2026, attached as Exhibit D, facility data: (last checked August 19, 2026), and a prepared summary of TARANTALA data compared to facility data, attached as Exhibit E.

In summary, Haugan’s capacity to serve its zoned students is woefully inadequate. It is unacceptable to tell Haugan and its attendance area families that only half of them can rely upon the neighborhood school, and the rest should look elsewhere. This is akin to controlled enrollment and cannot stand under the strategic plan. We are more than full: 91% of our students live in our attendance zone, but we can serve only 59% (at best) of our zoned students. There is no space to grow. As set forth below, history matters and explains why the Leland building is key to resolving Haugan’s insufficient capacity.

History Matters

Both the 22 years old history, when the Leland Building was constructed, and much more recent history, when North River moved in, are highly relevant. As cited above, Haugan lacks capacity to serve a reasonable number of zoned students. CPS recognized this and funded and built the Leland Building specifically to relieve Haugan’s overcrowding. See 2004 Transitional Advisory Commission (“TAC”) request for proposal addendum (courtesy of 2004 TAC Member Marni Willenson).

As noted in this addendum “it is only fitting that, given Haugan’s interest in, and commitment to, the welfare of the young, and the construction of a new facility to remedy overcrowding at the elementary school that bears his name, the new Albany Park middle school will also be named for him.”

The initial loss of the building to an ill-prepared novice charter operator, Aspira, against community support and the recommendation of the TAC, was a grievous blow that fully illustrates how low-income, minority school communities were treated under Renaissance 2010. Aspira never lived up to its promise, and families who wished to stick with their zoned public school for middle school between 2005-2019 were shuffled from Haugan to Marshall Middle, then to Roosevelt’s temporary junior high program, then finally back to Haugan. This mess and instability discouraged enrollment in our school.

Families who had a choice mostly avoided Haugan during this time period. Including my own. I (Tiffany), despite living in Haugan’s attendance zone at all relevant times, sent my older kids to magnet or gifted schools outside Albany Park. I only tried Haugan for my youngest once its middle grades were being phased back in and crowding was temporarily at bay. However, unlike what North River proposes now (expansion of its citywide program to occupy the entire Leland Building) Aspira at least had a preference zone for Haugan-zoned students, per the building’s specific purpose to relieve Haugan’s crowding. In this way, North River’s request to expand its citywide program to use the whole Leland building is a step beyond and away from that building’s original purpose.

Aspira’s closure does provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity: to right the 2004 wrong and provide the Haugan attendance zone with enough neighborhood school seats to accommodate all students who wish to enroll.

Moving on to more recent history, the Haugan community was misled by CPS and North River leadership regarding North River’s intentions. In late 2021 when North River sought to move in to co-locate with Aspira, we already knew we would almost certainly grow and need space in the Leland building within the next few years. Specifically, like at most CPS schools, our enrollment dipped during the pandemic and our first few “phased in” middle school classes starting in 2018 were small. But we knew both these conditions were temporary and we would grow. We shared this with both North River and CPS leadership. (We did not then anticipate the explosive growth caused by quickly absorbing more than 200 newcomer students the very next school year, which made the need for space critical.)

Haugan leadership and its CTU delegates consented to North River’s move into the Leland Building based on specific representations by both North River and CPS that North River would always remain a small school with one class per grade. North River leadership made this promise in meetings with Haugan and CTU delegates. North River’s own 2021 co-location request repeatedly mentioned its design and plans as a one-class-per-grade school. CPS leadership in turn advised and assured Haugan leadership that allowing North River to move in would benefit Haugan, and that North River would collaborate with Haugan if we needed space in the future. CPS and North River specifically requested and received Haugan’s blessing for North River to move in based on these representations.

Once again, we stand by our word and fully support North River’s continued existence in the Leland building as a one class per grade small school. But Haugan, Albany Park and CPS cannot afford to grant North River’s wish to change its plans and double in size without committing and continuing grave harm to the Haugan and Albany Park communities. This history matters too. We never would have agreed to North River’s occupation of the Leland building absent its specific and ultimately false representations.

Different Enrollment Models = Different Space Considerations

The most objectionable part of the Memo, and CPS’s handling of this matter to date, is its continuous equivocation between Haugan’s need for more space with North River’s desire to grow. This entirely ignores the fact that Haugan and North River are completely different types of schools. The Memo and presentations to both schools in spring and fall 2025 all fail to disclose that North River is a citywide, lottery based school that can control its enrollment at will, while Haugan is a neighborhood school that must enroll any zoned student upon request. While the schools enroll demographically similar populations (except that North River enrolls significantly fewer low-income students) the schools’ admission structures are completely different.

Specifically, as a citywide school with lottery-based admission, North River can control how many students enroll at its entry level grades by making fewer offers. It can control crowding in upper grades by not replacing students who leave. With appropriate admission practices North River need never be crowded. Haugan, however, has no such control. Once again, in its current state Haugan can only comfortably enroll less than 60% of its zoned students, a completely inappropriate cap under the CPS strategic plan that denies a large segment of our attendance area the chance to attend an adequately resourced zoned neighborhood school.

We are happy that North River is thriving as the one-class-per-grade school it was designed and always planned to be, but its growth (from underenrolled to adequately enrolled) has nothing to do with Haugan’s growth or need to plan for additional growth. Simply put, citywide schools never need to grow, and to reverse the harm from decades of underinvestment in neighborhood schools, any citywide school’s desire to grow must be measured carefully against how this would affect neighborhood schools. In this case, North River’s growth plan gravely harms Haugan.

CPS, however, has glossed over the potential harm to Haugan by North River’s planned expansion and has provided vague and contradictory information about whether the community should be asked to weigh in at all. In early February 2026, Portfolio assured us the community would decide how to use the vacant space in the Leland building. Shortly thereafter CPS leadership told Haugan leadership that “North River needs no permission to expand within its budget.” From attending North River’s LSC meetings last spring, we understand that North River is in fact phasing in or attempting to phase in (if demand permits) additional sections of PK, K, and 1 this fall.

In the Memo, CPS’s analysis does the opposite of what the strategic plan requires. It considers at several points how Haugan’s colocation could hurt North River’s plan to expand. CPS’s memo treats North River’s expansion request as being just as significant as Haugan’s co-location request. They are NOT apples to apples because they are totally different types of schools. CPS’s ignorance of this fact in all its communications about our requests makes it difficult to trust that the review process was conducted in good faith.

To date CPS has refused to provide any data, despite repeated FOIA requests, about current demand for North River seats. But based on application data for the 2025-2026 school year it was then able to offer kindergarten seats to 28 of 39 applicants. See this data (last checked September 8, 2026). This year to date, despite North River’s apparent attempt to phase in additional sections of its lower grades (without any community input or disclosure), its enrollment, too, is down: from 330 at the end of last school year to 316 at present. However, even if there was great demand for North River seats, this would not entitle it to expand at Haugan’s expense.

Consider, for example, Edison Regional Gifted Center, a small citywide school in Albany Park. For the 2025-2026 school year Edison received 749 applications for its 28 kindergarten spots. High demand for its program does not entitle it to take additional space from its own co-located neighborhood school Albany Park Multicultural Academy, and to our knowledge Edison has never made such a demand.

We also note that in addition to Haugan and North River, other local schools have decreased enrollment. North River’s planned expansion, if successful, would draw from other neighborhood schools, not just Haugan. This includes Henry, which is already designated as underenrolled, as well as Volta and Hibbard, which each lost significant numbers of students this year, diverting students and resources away from these schools. A summary of enrollment changes from the 20th day of school in 2025-2026, and the first week of school this year, is attached as Exhibit G.

Previous Negative Co-location Experience

We understand and believe North River’s accounts, by its leadership and expressed in its staff surveys, that it had a difficult experience co-locating with Aspira, which was ultimately a failed school. This is part of the pain: that Aspira had no business running multiple schools, nor diverting the Leland building from its purpose as a public school. But that does not mean North River will have the same experience co-locating with Haugan.

Haugan is not Aspira. Haugan leaders and staff are highly organized, motivated, and professional. They are experts at coordinating complicated space and scheduling challenges. They competently run a school of approximately 1000 students with few logistical issues. We firmly believe that a mutually beneficial partnership is possible and will develop if our request is granted. Moreover, our presence alongside North River will enhance the educational opportunities for both school communities. For instance, the schools could share the many community partnerships and extracurricular offerings Haugan provides.

Attempts at Collaboration

North River still has our full support to stay in the Leland building as the one-class-per-grade school it promised to remain. Once again, we allowed North River to move in with our blessing upon their specific representations that they would not seek to grow, nor take space that we would soon need. But less than three years later, when we asked North River to collaborate, its leadership refused.

Haugan community members have made multiple efforts to engage North River since January 2025, including sending letters and emails, attending its LSC meetings, and participating in meetings facilitated by third parties. Our efforts have resulted in only two brief meetings between Haugan stakeholders and North River leadership, during which we learned that the only option North River would consider was its own expansion request, which would neither guarantee any additional seats in North River for Haugan students, nor allocate Haugan space for its current students and additional students who want to attend their neighborhood school. North River leadership has been unwilling to discuss other options to date. We have spoken with limited numbers of North River community members - who have told us they are afraid of retaliation by North River’s administration if they engage with Haugan on this issue.

We still wish to collaborate with North River toward a mutually acceptable outcome. Our door is open at any point to work toward a joint resolution. We also would also welcome CPS’s help with collaboration efforts.

Assumptions About Haugan’s Demographics

We were told by some BoE members that there is an assumption that Haugan must be a rich white school because of its BoE meeting speakers. Given this assumption, the BoE wants to prioritize needier schools. We understand and acknowledge that CPS has had a long history of providing inadequate resources to low-income minority neighborhood schools. We applaud the strategic plan’s goal to correct this.

Haugan is among the schools that sorely needs this help. Our student body is 93% minority (and 82% Latino), 66% low income, 67% English Language Learner, and 25% Students with IEPs. Many of the low-income and/or Spanish speaking parents who make up most of our population have inflexible work demands and/or fear public exposure due to immigration concerns. Additionally, although some Spanish speaking parents have tried to sign up for several BOE meetings, they have been chosen to speak at a much lower rate than English-speaking Haugan supporters. However, our Latino parents are just as passionate about Haugan and determined to secure adequate space for our learners - last spring our bilingual parents organized an effort to gather hundreds of signatures in support of co-location, mostly from Haugan bilingual parents. Their letter with signature pages is attached as Exhibit H.

We do note that the Albany Park neighborhood is uniquely positioned to have diverse schools, but, as we mentioned above, more privileged Albany Park families have mostly avoided Haugan in recent decades due to crowding, the middle school instability following Aspira’s opening, and other reasons related to disinvestment. Research is clear: underprivileged children benefit tremendously from exposure to more privileged peers.

This is another reason that it is completely inappropriate for CPS to discourage enrollment in Haugan by families with the privilege and wherewithal to exercise school choice. It is not acceptable to encourage educational apartheid by keeping our school crowded and making us undesirable.

Sadly, based on CPS precedent, if we were actually a rich white school, we believe we would be treated differently: both now and 22 years ago. On the North side, where we are one of the poorer, least-white schools, we have many examples of other neighborhood schools getting what we do not. Taft and Audubon (both richer and whiter) got second campuses when they became crowded.

Taft’s example especially illustrates what we lost with the diversion of the Leland Building to Aspira. Taft has both a neighborhood high school and a citywide middle school Academic Center program. When Taft moved into its new second Freshman campus a few years back, it temporarily reduced the size of its citywide program to make sure there was enough space for all interested neighborhood students. Had Haugan been given the Leland Building to begin with, we could exercise similar discretion to allow out-of-area enrollment or programs only as space permits, while protecting room for neighborhood seats.

Since the year Aspira was given the Leland building, several other richer, more privileged schools got additions to relieve their overcrowding: Sauganash, Palmer, Coonley, Bell, Waters (two additions), Edgebrook, and Jamieson, to name a few. Each of these schools was granted space to enroll far more than 59% of students in its attendance area (and does), not told to shrink. Each of these schools is also much smaller and has significantly fewer zoned students than Haugan. In effect, rich white schools get their addition or second campus.

They are permitted to keep it and use it for their zoned students. We thought we, too, got a second campus 22 years ago. But against community support we lost it for 20 years to Aspira and now are locked into a 20+ month bruising effort to secure space for our students with no assurance, once again, that CPS will seek, much less consider, the wishes of the community.

Trusting CPS to Do its Job

So far, CPS has been of little assistance in addressing Haugan’s space concerns. Their advice seems focused on allowing North River’s expansion. Haugan leadership was told to:

1. Agree to North River moving into the Leland Building
2. Refrain from asking to co-locate “too soon” after Aspira closed its doors
3. Refrain from contacting North River leadership
4. Stop surveying the community (because CPS would take responsibility for this task)
5. Find solutions within our school for more space, and
6. Make sure we don’t grow.

Haugan was offered “solutions” to its crowding such as installing temporary dividers in special education classrooms, converting a teacher’s lounge to a classroom, adding trailers to one of only two small playgrounds. None of these suggestions are viable long-term solutions, given Haugan’s capacity for growth. Neither do they give adequate consideration to the needs of Haugan, its students, or its zoned families.

North River was additionally advised by former Chief Carmona at its first meeting about our request to use space in the Leland Building “just don’t talk to Haugan and you won’t have to co-locate.” And so North River has followed this advice. Surely North River and CPS leadership would not have made an under the table agreement without community input for North River to take the entire Leland Building if Aspira failed. But the secretive way this process was conducted certainly lends credence to that suspicion.

Ultimately the process and explanations in the Memo precluded any input from the larger community and our co-location request was denied based primarily on the preferences of 57 surveyed North River stakeholders (mostly staff). We hope CPS will approach this new request with a more well-rounded perspective and make a decision that prioritizes the needs of the families who live in Haugan’s zoned attendance boundaries.

Haugan needs and deserves to be a viable option for all zoned students. Under CPS’s Strategic plan “Together we Rise,” Haugan’s need for an adequate number of neighborhood school seats should be a high priority for CPS. CPS has the opportunity to encourage Haugan to thrive and provide the most appropriate education for all its students: PK children entering school for the first time, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners. CPS has the chance to ensure an adequately resourced school home for all Haugan’s zoned students.

CPS needs at long last and to correct the capacity mismatch which has made this so difficult for so long. Aspira’s vacation of the Leland Building provides a unique opportunity to finally correct a historical wrong and current imbalance.

Nothing in our proposal hurts North River’s ability to thrive in the Leland building as the one class per grade school it always has been and promised to remain. We are a strong and inclusive community and firmly believe that we can work with North River to benefit both schools and Albany Park over the long term.

We respectfully request the opportunity to co-locate with North River in the Leland Building. We are willing to co-locate on a temporary year-to-year basis if a longer process is needed to gather community feedback and determine the most appropriate long-term solution for Albany Park.

Sincerely,

Esther Pomransky
Haugan LSC Chairperson

Tiffany Allison Harvey
2025-2026 Haugan LSC Chairperson