Chicago’s government‑school system is doubling down — literally — on its “Sustainable Community Schools” (SCS) program to take over more and more functions once reserved for families, voluntary associations, and churches. It is all part of a push for “equity,” officials said.

Under the new plan, the city will be expanding from 20 “sustainable community schools” to almost twice as many for the 2025–26 school year. The August 4 announcement by city officials, union bosses, and government education chiefs came even as the district faces a staggering $734 million budget hole.

The idea behind “sustainable community schools” is to provide what government educators refer to as more “services” and even “wraparound services.” Under the so-called “village model,” everything from mental health and dental health to nutrition and “family wellbeing” becomes the government school’s responsibility.

Think of them as parental and church replacement centers. Within the institutions, everything for children but the bedtime stories and goodnight hugs — for now — become the responsibility of the state. Even parents can receive myriad “services” from the government schools as they become the new community “hub.”

“That means more mental health support, more mentorship programs, more community-oriented events, more access to resources for jobs, housing,” radical left-wing Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the press conference announcing the massive expansion of the controversial program, as if it were government’s job to feed and house the population.

Ironically, junk “studies” notwithstanding, the model has already proven to be an utter failure in Chicago when it comes to educating children. Consider the prominent “sustainable community school” known as Richards Academy in Chicago, which was supposed to show how successful the program would be.

It’s true, the school graduated about two thirds of its victims in four years. But Illinois State Board of Education data show the school did not have one single student proficient in either reading or math on standardized tests. How they graduated without even basic proficiency in anything remains a mystery.

Yes, really: Despite squandering some $4,000 more in taxpayer money per student, the model “sustainable community school” could not produce a single student proficient in any core subject. That is worse than even traditional government schools. Almost 80 percent of students were chronically absent at the academy, too, state data also show.

And yet, thanks to a rapidly growing stream of federal and state funding, the “community school” model is expanding across Chicago and nationwide. Incredibly, even as the atrocious data from the Richards Academy was being publicized, Chicago “educators” celebrated the model.

“We have committed as an entire union to using our contract to create more sustainable community schools like Richards Academy,” said Chicago Teachers Union boss Stacy Davis Gates at a press conference last year, calling it the “type of school community that is necessary to nurture, to educate, to reimagine, to ameliorate injustice and disparity.”

Davis Gates was also in the news more recently for claiming that children belong to government schools. Speaking to a crowd during a speech at the City Club of Chicago, she referred to writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin before going on a bizarre tirade.

“Baldwin says the children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe,” Davis Gates said in comments that went viral in June. “And what comes next is ‘CTU thinks your children are its children.’ Yes, we do. We do. We do.” Before that, she was attacking federal law enforcement as a “real threat” to students.

Speaking at last week’s announcement about the expansion of community schools, the CTU boss was gushing about her influence in it all. “What you see today is an expansion of community, an expansion of hope, an expansion of what young people deserve,” she said, touting the role of CTU’s “collective bargaining agreement” in expanding the scheme.

Chicago Public Schools already spends $10 million annually for its existing 20 “sustainable community schools.” And with the CPS facing a $750 million budget shortfall this year, officials are working to extort taxpayers across the state and the nation for even more cash to step in and fill the gap.

“The challenges that we are facing are severe,” Mayor Johnson said, claiming that more taxpayer spending on “services” for students would address the “root cause” of violence. “So here’s what I can say is that, as a collective, we’re working to ensure that, you know, this year’s budget allows for these investments to be maintained.”

The far-left mayor also called on parents to lobby. “We’re going to need those same parents who are concerned, like all of us, to work with the General Assembly to ensure that they are fully funded as a district,” he said, claiming he “inherited a really reckless, irresponsible budget.”

But regardless of the crushing cost to overburdened taxpayers, interim CPS CEO Macquline King said it must be done. Indeed, she suggested that government usurpation of more and more responsibility for the lives of children and their families was the only way for anyone to be able to make it in life.

“I believe that students can only succeed and learn when they are supported, and that’s what this village model does,” King said in one of many nods to Hillary Clinton’s collectivist vision of a “village” raising children rather than parents. In short, government — not family, God, church, or individual initiative — is the key.

Most of the Chicago schools selected for transformation are in poorer areas, though the model will eventually become ubiquitous if not stopped. Illinois is one of many states that, using federal funding, have unleashed the “community school” model on an unsuspecting population that does not realize the “free stuff” is part of a trap.

Just consider the radically expanded “mental health” component — one of the major elements of “sustainable community schools.” While purporting to be about helping children, the “mental health” schemes are really a trojan horse for social engineering, gathering sensitive data, and drugging children while enriching Big Pharma.

Even more alarming, “mental health” and “equity” are increasingly serving as cover for psychologically grooming children to embrace gender fluidity, hyper-racialism, and climate hysteria — indoctrination with views directly at odds with a biblical understanding of critical issues such as creation, sin, and family.

Ironically, the more government takes over from families and churches with its godless and oftentimes pagan indoctrination programs, the worse children’s “mental health” becomes. In fact, suicide among children — now a leading cause of death among youth — surge while school is in session. Children need God and family, not “wraparound services” from bureaucrats.

The term “sustainable” should be a dead giveaway, too. The term has been used by the United Nations for decades now to push its agenda of globalism, environmentalism, feminism, collectivism, and more. And as the UN has said openly in its own agreements, “education” is the most crucial part of changing the attitudes of the next generation.

The “full-service community schools” model really took off in America under the Obama administration, led by leftwing ideologues who wanted to further empower government. As part of the “Every Student Succeeds Act” and other legislation, huge sums of U.S. taxpayer money were handed out nationwide to create the institutions.

Proponents at the U.S. Department of Education boasted that these federally funded institutions would “target” families and children for “services” covering their “academic, physical, social, emotional, health, mental health, and other needs.” The real goal, though, was always a fundamental transformation.

Despite the nice-sounding intentions, this is not “charity.” It is a calculated bid to erode parental authority and supplant the traditional family and the church with an all-powerful state that controls and guides its dependents from cradle-to-grave. The indoctrination, sexualization, and dumbing down of children are all part of the agenda.

Education reform pioneer Horace Mann, the utopian who imported the Prussian regime’s educational system to America in the mid-1800s, boasted that educators were “entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” Chicago’s ruling class appears to agree.

John Dewey, the father of progressive education and a signatory of the Humanist Manifesto rejecting God, admired the Soviet regime’s schools because they replaced family upbringing with state “socialization.” Today, Chicago’s “sustainable community” schools are seeking to do exactly that.

Contrast their vision with God’s Word. In Deuteronomy 6 and 11, parents are commanded to teach their children about God and His ways “when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” In Chicago and beyond, government has nearly succeeded in usurping that completely.

The Sustainable Community Schools emerging across Chicago and the nation represent a turning point. Public education is rapidly moving away from even the pretense of imparting knowledge toward an outright hostile takeover of every facet of a child’s life and upbringing. The consequences will be devastating.