Interesting Correlation

Want to bet that the CTU uses this as an excuse not to close schools?

• As Chicago officials prepared to close 50 schools in 2013, the most at one time in American history, neighbors warned that the ramifications would go beyond worse academic outcomes for students. They worried the vacant buildings left behind would hurt their communities.

  Thirteen years later, a new study from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that the closings, in fact, led to a 10% increase in gun violence in the areas surrounding the vacant closed schools compared to neighborhoods with similar demographics where schools didn’t close.

  The researchers found no statistically significant increase in shootings in communities where closed schools were repurposed, which city officials promised would happen.

  “We found that school closure and subsequent building vacancy were associated with significant increases in firearm violence in affected neighborhoods, and that this association appeared to be partially mitigated by subsequent school buildings re-use,” the authors wrote in the study, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Interesting take - that closed schools (or schools that don't get re-purposed) lead to more gun crime?  Schools mitigate conflict? 

Color us skeptical at the very least.