Leaders aim to block CPS takeover of Urban Prep charter school

Juwaun Cooper Muhammad, an Urban Prep graduate who went on to Georgetown University, is among a group of African American leaders who want Urban Prep to continue running the city’s only all-boys high school focused on Black teens. Chicago Public Schools revoked Urban Prep’s operating charter and plans to run the school starting this fall. (Sarah Karp / WBEZ)

A group of African American leaders in Chicago called on the mayor Tuesday to halt the takeover of Urban Prep Academy — the once-lauded but recently troubled charter high school that serves Black male students — as Chicago Public Schools prepares to start running the school this fall. 

“If the empirical evidence shows the leading issue here in the city of Chicago is crime, and education is the way forward to reduce crime, then why is it that they’re going to close a school like Urban Prep as opposed to duplicate Urban Prep?” said attorney Victor Henderson, at a press conference on behalf of the Coalition of African American Leaders or COAL. “We don’t need to see fewer Urban Preps. We need to see more of that.”