CHICAGO – Mayor Rahm Emanuel remains unmoved by a gang of protesters who launched a hunger strike in hopes of saving a chronically failing public high school on the city’s south side.

This week, hunger strikers Emanuel about the health risks they’re taking to make their point, but the mayor stuck to the facts, and simply explained why their efforts are in vein, WGN-TV reports.

“I would remind everybody what they’re trying to work through, within a 3-mile radius there’s 10 high schools,” Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Within about a mile of the school is King College Prep. So there’s a lot of high schools in that area, and how do you talk about another one when even some of the high schools that are within the 3-mile radius are not at capacity yet?”

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Twelve days ago about a dozen “social justice” community activists embarked on a hunger strike outside of Dyett High School in Chicago’s Washington Park in hopes of forcing Chicago Public Schools officials to accept the group’s proposal for a new “Dyett High School of Global Leadership and Green Technology.”

CPS board members voted in 2012 to close Dyett this year as part of a phase out plan for underutilized and underperforming schools, and are expected to reopen the school in 2016-17 with a new focus. Dyett High School previously boasted a graduation rate of 42 percent, with only about 10 percent of student proficient in math or reading, according to Niche.com.

The “social justice” warriors staging the hunger strike – which call themselves the “Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School” – are led by Teachers for Social Justice, the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Journey for Justice Alliance and others. In recent days they’ve dialed up their antics to pressure city officials, including delivering a letter to city hall citing the health risks of drinking only water and light juice for days on end.

“As you must know, the longer this protest continues, each of the 12 hunger strikers is vulnerable to a variety of conditions that compromise their overall well-being and may result in permanent damage to their health,” according to the letter, which was signed by 17 doctors and nurses.

“The parents and grandparents, friends and relatives of Dyett students have turned to this tactic as a last resort. We implore you to hear their concerns and give serious consideration to their proposal to preserve the integrity of Dyett High School as a public, open-enrollment high school in the heart of the historic Bronzeville neighborhood.”

“One woman was so affected during the hunger strike that she went to the hospital Monday,” WGN-TV reports. “Another striker dropped during Wednesday’s school board meeting.”

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There’s currently three different proposals for the high school, and a meeting set for Sept. 15 for the school board to hear public comments on them. But the hunger strikers are angry because they were under the impression their proposal would get a vote on Aug. 26. The city postponed the action until next month to focus on the district’s budget crisis, according to media reports.

Other proposals for Dyett include a four-year visual and performing arts school serving about 650 students run by the nonprofit Little Black Pearl, as well as a sports themed academy run by Charles Campbell – the interim principal – to serve 800 to 900 students.

“We can’t give them a decision now, I wish we could,” CPS Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson told the Tribune. “But I also want to make clear that our goal as an administration is to really solve problems – and we can’t do that by creating additional problems. SO we have to be responsible about the decisions we make.”

The Tribune reports that The Coalition to Revitalize Dyett has been urging the city to adopt its vision for the school for six years, a vision that would “focus on leadership skills and training students to engage in the political process.”

That would presumably be to fight “social justice” causes the Chicago Teachers Union is such a fan of. So it’s no wonder CTU officials are also talking tough.

“This is not the time to hide behind some chump, you know, timeline that you just make up last month anyway,” CTU VP Jesse Sharkey told the Tribune. “This is time to be real and get people together in a room. That’s what the mayor’s famous for, right? Making these hard decisions and knocking heads together and getting a solution? Well, do that with this one, because we need it. If we are waiting until sometime next month, then someone’s going to die.”