Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Housing Authority have joined with a host of universities, foundations and think tanks in an ambitious effort to overhaul 25 schools and transform a blighted swath of the city’s South Side.
As looming rows of high-rises that make up some of the nation’s most notorious public housing are shuttered and demolished, the city hopes to turn the schools around them into a drawing card that will lure a mix of families back to the area.
Slated to begin in 2005, the “re-invention” of schools in the State Street corridor could include everything from new curriculum to expanded after-school and preschool opportunities to public-private partnerships, officials said Thursday.
“We’re aiming for dramatic change; we’re not going to recreate the status quo,” said Arne Duncan, chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools. “No other school system in the country has pursued this link between community revitalization and school development.”
Joining the city in the venture are an A-list of Chicago institutions, including the University of Chicago, DePaul University, the Illinois Institute of Technology and possibly the Museum of Science and Industry.
“It is a noble experiment,” said Terry Mazany, chief operating officer of the Chicago Community Trust and one of 125 politicians, professors, foundation officials and others who met Thursday in the first planning session.
“It’s a great physical location, so close to the lake and downtown,” he said. “It’s a delicate balance to pull something like this off. You can’t do it just with the housing and retail development. You have to get the third leg and that’s the schools.”
The targeted area stretches from 31st Street on the north to 47th Street on the south and from Lake Michigan to the Dan Ryan Expressway, a few blocks west of State Street.
About 7,000 new housing units–a mix of subsidized and market-rate housing–are planned for the neighborhood city officials are now calling “Mid-South.” The plans call for low-income families to live across the street from professionals in $300,000 townhouses.
Officials also hope to integrate an area that has long been among the most racially segregated in the nation.
“We are trying to turn dysfunctional neighborhoods into healthy mixed-income communities,” said Terry Peterson, chief executive officer of the Chicago Housing Authority.
Peterson said that after years of isolated planning by his agency and the school system, Mayor Richard Daley encouraged the departments to coordinate their efforts to rebuild the area.
Daley was not present at the announcement, but spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said the mayor encourages any effort to promote diversity and attract middle-class families to public schools.
Community leaders concede it is far from clear whether the city can attract families back into an area historically identified with gang violence and drug dealing.
Some parents from the targeted area, meanwhile, worry that the venture may be a veiled strategy to close down their schools. Many of the schools have suffered from severely declining enrollments as the housing complexes empty out.
“It’s not like there’s a lack of education there,” said Phyllis Edmond, 21, who was picking up her children from Hartigan School at Root and State Streets. She had heard rumors that the school, which is at about 50 percent of capacity with 290 students, might be shuttered.
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses With Blue Light Filter For Computer Use
Edmond said Hartigan’s size gives teachers more time to work with academic stragglers.
Some parents and teachers said they welcomed the efforts, however.
Tamara Hill, a 1st-grade teacher at Beethoven Academy, grew up in Robert Taylor Homes, 4950 S. State St., in a tower that has since been demolished.”I remember the projects the way they were before. It changed for the worse, but now it’s changing for the better,” Hill said. “If you have a diversity of people, of low, middle and high incomes, it would help give the people at the low end a better chance.”
Barbara Eason-Watkins, chief education officer for the Chicago Public Schools, sidestepped questions about school closings. Instead, she cited an agreement reached with the Chicago Teachers Union last spring that put a moratorium on school closings for academic performance for at least a year. The agreement did not bar closings because of declining enrollments.
The school system earned the ire of the teachers union with a surprise announcement in 2002 that three schools would be shuttered. At the time, many parents and teachers expressed suspicions that the decision was a way to move poor people out of the schools and replace them with middle-class families.
Eason-Watkins said in an interview that skeptical parents along the State Street corridor could look at the reopening of Dodge and Williams Schools this fall as proof that the school district keeps its word and does not want to push poor families out of its schools.
“I think we’ve seen the value of starting with a clean slate,” Eason-Watkins said of the experience at Dodge and Williams.
Though a union representative attended Thursday’s planning meeting, union officials remained wary.
“I really need more information before I comment on this venture,” said union president Deborah Lynch. “There are schools in the area where efforts have been under way to improve performance.”
The union is involved in reforms at three elementary schools–Hartigan, Attucks and Raymond–as part of the 2003 deal with the school district.
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said the physical rebuilding of the South Side–with new water mains, housing and sidewalks–cannot create a strong neighborhood without strong schools. “Communities are tied together by schools,” Preckwinkle said.
The MacArthur Foundation contributed $205,000 to the planning effort, while Bank One added $19,000. Working groups are scheduled to produce ideas for the schools by June.
Community residents will have a chance to weigh in with ideas for the plan from 9 a.m. to noon Feb. 7 in the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville, 3519 S. Giles Ave.