Expect an uptick in community organizers.
Via WGHP:
A product of Chicago’s South Side, DeAvion Gillarm will be the first in his family to attend college.
“I always had a plan,” said Gillarm, a Morgan Park High School graduate headed to Lincoln College next month. “You’re not going to be successful without a plan.”
Under a controversial new requirement, starting in 2020, students hoping to graduate from a public high school in Chicago must provide evidence they, too, have a plan for the future: either acceptance to college or a gap-year program, a trade apprenticeship, military enlistment or a job offer.
“It will help students think about what they want to do next in life,” said Gillarm, who wants to study exercise science in college.
But not everyone is sold on a plan that Mayor Rahm Emanuel said will steer every graduating senior in the nation’s third-largest school system on “a path toward a successful life.”
Chicago Republican Party chairman Chris Cleveland, the parent of a public school student, said the Democratic mayor should instead focus on reducing a public high school dropout rate of nearly 30%. He questioned how the cash-strapped school system will pay for additional guidance counselors to help students develop post-secondary plans.
“How can they deny a high school kid a diploma he or she has earned?” Cleveland asked. “It’s all well and good that they’re asking kids to think about their futures, but denying a kid a diploma because they didn’t get into college or get a job is absurd.”