The Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved a plan that will turn five under-performing neighborhood elementary schools into magnet-cluster schools next fall with an emphasis on technology.

The schools will guarantee admittance to kindergarten through eighth grade students residing in the schools' attendance areas. If there are any spots available after that, they would be filled through a city-wide computerized lottery.

Arne Duncan, Chicago Public Schools chief, says the new schools are not magnet schools, but instead magnet programs located in clusters. Typically, a magnet school offers admittance to all city students with spots obtained through a lottery; a magnet cluster, he says, serves neighborhood students first.

The addition of the technology programs, a first among the city's neighborhood elementary schools, is funded by an $11.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Chicago was one of 14 districts in the nation to receive such a grant.

The five schools were among 26 in 10 targeted communities to apply for the technology program. All five, says CPS education chief Barbara Eason-Watkins, were designated as having failed to make adequate academic progress in most of the last five years.

In all, 3,550 students will be in the program when the schools are at capacity.

The schools are Dumas Elementary at 6650 S. Ellis Ave., Dunne Elementary at 10845 S. Union Ave., Dvorak Math and Science Tech Academy at 3615 W. 16^th St., Nicholson Math and Science Elementary at 6006 S. Peoria Ave., and Spencer Math and Science Academy at 214 N. Lavergne Ave.

"We'll be creating 650 new high-quality (student) seats," says Eason-Watkins.

The board also approved an expansion of the L.E.A.R.N. Charter School. Next fall, 198 students in kindergarten through second grade will share facilities at Chalmers Elementary at 2745 W. Roosevelt Road. L.E.A.R.N. will share Chalmers for two years, at which time it would move into a new building in the North Lawndale area, expanding its total enrollment to 1,600.

Gregory White, president and CEO of L.E.A.R.N., says 20 possible sites have been identified for a new building and the school has enlisted the help of a real estate broker.

A request by L.E.A.R.N. to share facilities at Gregory Elementary in East Garfield Park has been turned down.

The board also gave the go-ahead for the design and construction of eight new schools at a cost of $427 million. 

Depending on site approvals, some schools would be ready by July 2009. Two of the schools are high schools: a replacement for South Shore High, at a cost of $90.3 million, and the new Kelly Curie Gage Park High School, at a cost of $100.5 million.

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