Union Park High Schools, Inc.

What is a Union Park high school?

Mission

As a nonprofit, Chicago-based school management organization, Union Park is leading the effort to design, open, and operate a network of union-partnered charter high schools in the city’s least served communities. Union Park’s mission includes promoting supportive working and learning environments for teachers by emphasizing collaborative decision-making, providing ongoing professional development, and by fostering mutually beneficial relationships of respect between teachers and governing bodies, relationships founded on a common interest: providing students with the best education possible.

Initiative

Union Park was born from an ongoing collaborative effort between four pillar organizations:

• the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT)
• the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)
• the Service Employees International Union Local 73 (SEIU), and
• the Center for the Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

Working together, these organizations recognized the need for radical change in Chicago’s schools, and established Union Park to design, open, and operate a network of faculty-friendly charter high schools, each implementing John Hopkins University’s powerful Talent Development High School reform model. In addition to recognizing the importance of initiating curricular reform, each partner behind Union Park believes strongly in creating a supportive school environment for learning and working, and in establishing a collaborative process for making and executing key decisions.