The Choir Academy of Chicago, a charter school serving underprivileged minority youth and operating in a model based on the Boys Choir of Harlem Academy, is “perilously close to dissolving its music-based curriculum, if not the whole institution.” The school, which opened in 2001, has had financial problems from the beginning, and relations with the Chicago Childrens’ Choir, which oversees the school, have been strained in recent years. The board collapsed in 2004, and as the school desperately tries to stay open, those in charge now appear willing to scrap the music that has always been at the core of its educational approach.