Chicago Principal Loses Battle on Overcrowding

City Won't Cap Enrollment for Struggling School

CHICAGO -- Fed up with overcrowding at a Chicago public high school with too many problems and too little space, Principal Martin McGreal indulged a fantasy of overwhelmed school leaders everywhere: He declared enrollment closed.

McGreal gambled that Chicago school executives would stem the influx and spare the students at poorly performing Gage Park High School. He took a stand, McGreal later told parents, "because I would not compromise your children's educations."

School authorities responded by firing McGreal.

"We needed to get a principal in there who wasn't turning families away two weeks ahead of classes," said Mike Vaughn, spokesman for the Chicago public schools.

When the doors open Tuesday in the nation's third-largest school system, 200 to 300 more students will file through Gage Park's metal detectors than the building was designed to hold. Teachers will be asked to grade more papers. Parents will be asked to remain patient.

McGreal, 37, lost his battle and his $113,000 job, but he and his supporters hope the ruckus he raised will help rescue the most overcrowded schools in the troubled system.

In a struggle with echoes across the country, Chicago administrators responsible for 415,000 students acknowledge that they have been unable to keep up with shifting demographics or volatile local, state and federal tax equations.

Innovative projects and substantial investments inspired by Mayor Richard M. Daley (D), who set the pattern for a big-city mayor deeply involved in school policy, remain works in progress. Some schools are being shuttered as others are remade with an emphasis on size, independence and measurable results.

The projects are taking time. Meanwhile, some of the largest neighborhood schools, which are required to accept all students within their boundaries, have seen little reform as legions of children file through and filter into the world, often with severely limited skills.

At Gage Park High on the city's Southwest Side, half quit without a diploma.

"We have been set up to fail," history teacher, softball coach and union representative Susan Steinmiller declared at a community meeting last week in the school auditorium. Her five classes are each scheduled to average 35 students this year above the 28 to 30 set forth in the union contract.

"We need extra security. We need more teachers," said Steinmiller, who arrived in 1993 and considers Gage Park her second home. "That's what we need on Tuesday. Not next week. Not next month. Tuesday."