The future of the all-boys charter school network Urban Prep Academies appears bleak.
Dennis Lacewell, founding principal at Urban Prep’s Englewood campus and now the organization’s chief academic officer, said the charter network is being unfairly targeted. “Unfortunately, the history of this country is when individuals aren’t profiting or prospering off Black success or Black excellence, there is an attempt to destroy those,” said Lacewell. “So I don’t think this is a coincidence that we are the first targeted in this way to close. And particularly when you look at the issues that CPS has had with proven allegations where criminal charges were taking place at schools who had this type of allegations, they haven’t closed those schools.
“There have been four investigations, two by DCFS, which came back to not substantiate any of this and a third by independent investigator that also did not substantiate any of these allegations,” said Lacewell. “So it’s only the CPS-connected investigation which came back with something.” In response to those budget cuts, instead of laying off staff or cutting programs, “we took out some loans, we got some credit cards to make ends meet during that time,” said Lacewell. “And since that time, we have resolved all of those . So again, it’s just very disappointing that a decision is made with a lot of misrepresentation of the facts.”