Failing schools Underprivileged schools Just plain bad schools nbsp Thats how Eve L Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them with a mix of pity and contempt nbsp But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside as a student then a teacher and now a scholar who studies them And that perspective has shownnbspher that public schools are not buildings full of failurestheyre an integral part of their neighborhoods at the heart of their communities storehouses of history and memory that bring people together nbsp Never was that role more apparent than inwhen Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem a response to declining enrollments and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents