It’s been 48 hours since I pulled down the new Space Utilization data posted by CPS last Friday and have been reviewing it. I’m not done yet, but I’ve decided to share what I am looking at thus far because many eyes on data are better than one or two.
What am I looking for?
- Changes in Methodology and Data Collection
- The explanation regarding the changes to the Space Utilization Formula was relatively straightforward.
- There was no explicit explanation released about why/how CPS has decided to change the classroom count in specific schools. We’re still waiting for that. Which is odd, because when you change anything regarding how data is calculated year to year it deserves a pretty detailed explanation.
- Changes to Specific Schools
- How did the classification (underutilized, efficient, overcrowded) of specific schools change with new enrollments, formula, and data?
- How do changes in enrollment look for specific schools regardless of the utilization formula?
- Other Unanswered Questions
- Why were charter, contract, and special education schools kept off of the report when they were always included previously?
- Even if charter, contract and special education schools have separately negotiated “caps,” why aren’t the specifics of those “caps” made public?
- Using other available information, what is the estimated utilization of those schools left off of the report?
- How have “receiving schools” since the last round of closings fared in regards to enrollment and utilization? Did the situation live up to the promise of that administration? Were the schools that students were moved to by CPS “significantly better”…enough so that they were able to retain students?
I matched up the 2017-2018 and 2015-2016 Space Utilization Reports. (Remember! They used different classroom counts and a different utilization formula!)
So, take a look. Tell me what you see. Tell me if I need to make any corrections. I’ll return in a while and weigh in. (I used a sampling of Charter and Special Education Schools…it will take a lot of work to add them all in manually.)
Apples 2 Apples in Chicago Public Schools 
I cannot figure out where to look to find these 2 additional classrooms they say I have…. can Dispensa tell me where he looks to gather that info? For instance, we have two teeny rooms (sort of large closets with windows) that hold 5-8 kids. We use them for SPED resource rooms and sometimes a SPED teacher needs to give grades. So in gradebook we call these “classrooms” but they’re not big enough to hold a class or even half a class. I want to see the roster of what Dispensa calls my 23 classrooms.
My hypothesis is that CPS is now counting basement rooms, when they were not counted previously. The summary of rooms that CPS has classified as student spaces are listed in the Detailed Facilities summary, though not all of them are being included because the numbers do not add up. Here is the data for Belding:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1StYRkxNh973jAdVAru57C7vAcHdsqJ9TamAK1ibDCLA/edit?usp=sharing