The boarding schools could be of several types: a complex combining a school and a dorm, schooling at one location and housing at another, and educating and housing students whose behavior already has them involved with the juvenile justice system. Since CPS students often face myriad situations, some version of all three models might be needed.

CPS believes it has become the schools' obligation to step in and offer not only necessities but also incentives to help students learn. Many parents cannot or will not provide the tools or attitude children need to succeed in school.

Should the schools step in where parents cannot or will not? Should the larger issues of unemployment, lack of affordable housing, and drug addiction that prevent parents from helping kids succeed be addressed first?

Yes, we must do more to directly address "unemployment, lack of affordable housing, and drug addiction," but these are huge and often intractable problems, and all we've been able to do in decades of confronting them has been to come up with band-aids. In many cases, we've taken one step forward and two steps back. Every time the economy worsens (as it is doing now), unemployment goes up, affecting the parents of these at-risk kids the most. We construct "affordable housing," but in a short time these developments become nests of criminal activity. The so-called "war on drugs" is an abysmal failure that has done little but overload the prisons with drug offenders (major and minor). Perhaps a plan such as this will provide an ounce of prevention. It's obvious that we're far short of a "cure."

My adult counseling clients who were on SSI because of real disabilities received letters after three years and were told they would have to report for job training or prove that they were job hunting. One ended up cleaning houses for working couples; another got a job in a hospital office. A friend who is permanently disabled works part-time because SSI doesn't cover all his living expenses. SSI periodically checks up on him regarding his disability and demands proof from his healthcare workers.