Discussions about the violent death of a student overshadowed reform Thursday as residents somberly voted to elect a local school council at Harper High School where 16-year-old Chester Dunbar was fatally stabbed in a classroom the day before.
As thousands of other city residents headed to the polls at other high schools, and newly elected local elementary school council members celebrated victory`s won Wednesday, the neighborhood around Harper at 6520 S. Wood St., was still stunned by the outburst of anger that left Dunbar dead.
”It could have happened anywhere, but the schools should be more secure, especially since that`s where many of the gang members are and that`s where they do their recruiting,” said Donna Brooks, a parent of a freshman who came to the school to vote for her husband, Major, a candidate for a parents seat on the Harper council.
”I think security should be top priority,” Donna Brooks said. ”I told my husband that if necessary, students should be searched before they come into school, and I don`t see where that should be a problem if it means saving a life.”
Another 16-year-old Harper student, Eric Scruggs, has been charged as an adult with murder in Dunbar`s death, and police were still seeking a second 16-year-old suspect, who according to witnesses, stabbed Dunbar with a kitchen knife after he and Scruggs confronted the victim. That unidentified suspect was suspended from school last year after another stabbing incident, police said.
While students at Harper appeared outwardly calm Thursday, a team of teachers, social workers and a school board Crisis Intervention Team met with the teacher and those students who witnessed the killing.
”This has had an effect on everyone, but the students have different ways of masking it,” said principal Barbara Pulliam. ”It was important that those students who were in the room had a chance to express their feelings.” Although fatalities in Chicago`s schools are rare-Dunbar was only the second student to die in an attack in a school building-lesser forms of violence in many schools is not.
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So, while talk about the agenda of the new local school councils has centered around community authority, control of budgets and the ability to hire and fire the principals, some parents at Harper and other schools, were joining Donna Brooks in expressing the hope that school security will be a top priority.
”I want some kind of control in the school yard,” said Anita Limas, a parent at Bowen High School, 2710 E. 89th St., where parents have been divided along racial lines and have disagreed on whether to oust the school`s principal, James Ahern. Opposing slates of candidates of Mexican descent and blacks sought council seats there.
But that didn`t matter to Limas. ”The violence. The gangs. It`s crazy. It`s scary. It doesn`t really matter to me if the board is all black or all Hispanic, or half and half, just as long as the people elected are concerned about helping the students,” she said.
Preliminary school board figures indicated that students, who selected one of their own to serve on high school councils as nonvoting members cast more ballots Thursday than their parents. Of the incomplete totals of 110,038 votes reported late in the evening by the board, 65,895 were cast by students, 20,963 by community residents, 13,765 by parents and 9,415 by school staff members.
Those totals and the votes cast Wednesday in 469 elementary school council elections translate into ”an affirmation of school-based
management,” according to board vice president William Singer. ”We`ve outdistanced our expectations. We`ve outdistanced the nay-sayers.”
In all, about 350,000 voters will have chosen 5,400 candidates from among 17,000 when Chicago`s elections, mandated by the legislature in the Chicago School Reform Act, are officially over.
At least one longtime school volunteer said that a lower parent turnout in the high school elections could be attributed to a ”closer connection”
between parents and younger, grade school-age children.
”I think the (high school) students tend to cry out for more freedom,”
said Florence Cox, co-chair of the coalition for Parent Advisory Councils.
”They want to show the parents they`re more independent, that they don`t need the kind of mothering as a teen-ager as they needed as a much younger child.”
And most students have their own ideas about what should be done.
”We need money to fix up our school. We need to get the lazy teachers out and the caring parents in. I`m praying these councils will do that,” said Carlton Merrit, a senior at Marshall Metro High School, 3250 W. Adams St.
”I`m tired of these big-mouth people at the Board of Education promising to make our school better,” said Alan Brown Jr., a junior at Marshall. ”It seems like these councils are a little better than the promises. They`re getting my parents involved.”
At some schools, candidates used the elections to try and unify a divided school body. At Farragut High School, 2345 S. Christiana Ave., where a nearby railroad embankment divides the predominantly Mexican community of Little Village from North Lawndale`s black community, the parents worked together to elect a slate that reflects the school`s racial diversity.
”We`re helping each other,” said Katie Sharpe, a candidate for a parent`s seat. ”They can`t move the school and they can`t move the houses, so the kids are still going to be here. If we`re not together, the kids are going to suffer.”
Still, candidates said many of the voters cast ballots along racial lines.
”If you don`t know anyone, there`s a tendency to vote for your own kind,” said Edwin Healy, who is running for a community seat.
Some candidates, though, like several at Phillips High School, 244 E. Pershing Rd., had an edge on others because they are known city residents. Candidates include former Ald. William Barnett, Park District Board member Margaret Burroughs and community activist Lu Palmer.
At Whitney Young Magnet High School, 211 S. Laflin St., candidates campaigned on nearby sidewalks, passing last-minute flyers to voters.
Billy Williams, assistant vice president with First National Bank of Chicago, wore a white straw hat with red, white and blue band and stood about a block away looking for voters.
”If you want something done right, you do it yourself and that`s why I`m running for the council,” said Williams, whose son and daughter are enrolled at Young.
”The way I see it, you`ve either got to put up or shut up. We`re talking about the future of my children and a whole lot of Chicago`s children,” he said.
LOCAL SCHOOL COUNCIL ELECTIONS.
Voter turnout by district for Oct. 11 elementary school elections with 469 of 469 schools reporting; as of 4:30 p.m., Oct. 12, 1989
District Community voters Parent voters Staff
1 9,225 10,413 2,338
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2 12,718 12,908 2,971
3 5,511 13,226 3,298
4 4,812 6,861 2,607
5 5,235 11,927 2,940
6 7,699 8,158 2,279
7 6,548 9,427 2,283
8 4,550 6,186 3,082
9 9,225 9,696 2,193
10 7,447 7,736 25,911
Grand total of 195,419 includes a 34.71 percent turnout of parents.
baiduhai Graphic; Source: Chicago School Board.