I work at a school called Passages in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. Our school has one of the highest percentages of refugee students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), 70 percent of which are low-income, over half black or brown, and four in ten with limited English skills.

It has a history of great students and teachers and staff. But there are also many great students and teachers and staff who have left because of the way our charter holder has marginalized us.

Those of us who return year after year do so because we know the potential of what we’re building. Yet every year, we lose services. And even when we get something new, it seems like we have two more taken away.