Eve Ewing: Ghosts in the Schoolyard

In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the closure of nearly fifty of Chicago’s schools—an unprecedented response to budget shortages, declining enrollments, and performance challenges. But what were the real-life consequences of such a sweeping tactic? And why—if those schools were “failing”—did people care so much about keeping them open? University of Chicago sociologist and former CPS teacher and student Eve Ewing knows intimately what schools mean to the students, parents, teachers and neighborhoods they serve. In Ghosts in the Schoolyard, she unpacks the history of systemic racism, bad faith, and distrust embedded in the city’s public schools system, ultimately revealing that this issue is about much more than just schools. WTTW/Chicago Tonight reporter Brandis Friedman joins Ewing for this powerful conversation.

This program is generously underwritten by The Allstate Insurance Company and is presented in partnership with ​WTTW/Chicago Tonight.

This program was recorded on October 28, 2018.