Do the Math

A parent and community-led coalition is fighting to keep three elementary schools in the North Lawndale neighborhood open after another community group proposes to close the schools in exchange for one STEAM school. Students, parents and teachers rally against the closures and come up with a proposal of their own. 

Transcript

Narrator: [00:00:00] Change Agents.

Judith McCray: With talk of replacing three elementary schools with one STEAM school in Chicago's North Lawndale, a coalition of parents and educators fight to keep them open. It's an old story in a city with a history boarding up schools in black and brown neighborhoods. Here's the story from producers Jocelyn Martinez and La'Nita Brooks, 

News Clip: teachers and community members announcing their opposition to a proposal that would create a new steam Lawndale, but would mean the closure of three existing schools.

A proposal to close some schools on the west side has parents very concerned.[00:01:00] 

La'Nita Brooks: Known for its iconic greystones, street names beginning with the letter K, and being the set for Netflix show Shameless, North Lawndale sits on the west side of Chicago. More than 85 percent of the population is black, and around 8 percent are Latino. The median household income is around 26, 781. North Lawndale is a marginalized community suffering from disinvestment.

Arguably, the hardest hit is the neighborhood's education system. North Lawndale is all of these things, but it is also a community dear to my heart, as I spent half of my childhood there. I am La'Nita Brooks, a journalism grad student at DePaul University, with a goal to be the voice of my community. I personally want whatever's best for the Children in the neighborhood, just like my mother would have wanted for me.

Shavon Coleman: My principal Had asked me to come to a meeting like [00:02:00] I want to say between July and August of last year. It doesn't even seem like it was just last year. It seemed like it's been forever, but it was just last year when she said there's an organization, you know, and they want to build the same school.

La'Nita Brooks: That was Shavon, a pre K teacher assistant at Lawndale Community Academy in the North Lawndale neighborhood. Shavon is a legacy following her grandfather's footsteps And teaching in the same school. Her grandfather taught, 

Shavon Coleman: my grandfather was a gym teacher there for 41 years. He retired in June and died in August of the same year in 2005, and we buried him on a Friday.

And that Monday I continued the legacy working at Lawndale Community Academy. 

La'Nita Brooks: Lawndale, along with Summer Elementary and Crown Community Academy were the three schools, the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council. or NLCCC, we're proposing to shutter to make [00:03:00] way for a STEM academy. We reached out to the NLCCC for comment but received no response.

Shavon Coleman: So I checked out the meeting, and in that meeting, they said some unfavorable things, such as, yeah, so we're going to consolidate, consolidate three schools in the area. And so that's why I just knew that night, like, we're in a fight of our lives. 

La'Nita Brooks: For Shavon, the meeting was the first time she had ever heard about the proposal to close three existing elementary schools.

These schools have been facing underfunding and under enrollment. The proposal came as a shock to many in the community. While the addition of a new STEM school seemed like a good idea, the community understood that closing three schools in the neighborhood could have a negative impact. 

Shavon Coleman: So we had to organize really quickly.

And I mean, this, this meeting happened in October. By the second [00:04:00] week after that meeting, I want to say, you know, we had come up with the whole coalition. 

La'Nita Brooks: The North Lawndale Parent and Community Coalition, or NLPCC, was formed encompassing parents, teachers and community members. 

Shavon Coleman: We were getting surveys out.

We got a Facebook, Instagram page. You know, we were knocking on doors, telling the community about what was going on. Um, we had press conferences at all three schools, you know, so it was, it was so much to be done in so little time because we were trying to meet that. the deadline that the Board of Education has in which they have to make things public.

La'Nita Brooks: Racing against the clock, the NLPCC was able to get word out about NLCCC's plan to shutter three schools in the community and use 45 million dollars to create a new state. STEM Academy. 

Dixon Romeo: I think one of the thing that gets misconstrued in, in like this issue is that no one doesn't want investment in the North Lawndale community.

The [00:05:00] issue is investment at the expense of what?

La'Nita Brooks: Dixon Romeo is the campaign's director for United Working Families. Romeo is in his late twenties, a Grinnell College graduate, and a resident of North Lawndale. Soon after graduating, he set on a mission to give back and make a change in his community. He has been working alongside NLPCC in their fight to keep the schools open.

Dixon Romeo: Building a brand new school, closing three schools, doesn't change, doesn't fix the housing issues in the community. It doesn't fix the issues of police violence or intercommunal violence. It doesn't fix the issue of jobs in the community. 

La'Nita Brooks: According to the Quality of Life Plan by the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, North Lawndale has a low population density.

High poverty and unemployment making it hard to attract business to the area. 

Shavon Coleman: In their minds, if they build a new school, you know, the people would come back to the [00:06:00] community because a lot of people have left the North Lawndale community, and rightfully so, because they're building places around there that people that live in the area cannot afford.

La'Nita Brooks: Shavon argues that shutting down schools won't solve any of the community's problems. Chicago does not have a good track record when it comes to school closures. Schools in black and brown communities end up closing and disproportionately affecting those neighborhoods. Notoriously, remember for closing schools in marginalized communities, Is Chicago's former mayor Rah Emanuel.

Emanuel served as the 55th mayor of the city from 2011 to 2019. 

Dixon Romeo: Rahm Emanuel is famous for closing 50 schools, but if you look over the history of Chicago since the eighties and nineties, we've closed like around 175 schools, right? And so what, if you look at that data, what you always see is that students at best perform the same.

There are 10,000 kids who didn't return to CP. Right? They may live in Chicago. They may [00:07:00] not. We don't know. But that speaks to how whenever these plans happen, they're not community driven. They don't get the result they say they do. They don't give the community a chance to bounce back. 

La'Nita Brooks: School closures in 2013 ignited rallies and demonstrations across Chicago.

A move that marked the largest school closure in one city. 90 percent of students belong to mostly black communities.

That was a Sean Johnson, a nine year old Chicago student at a rally against the mass school closures reports Democracy Now., eight years later, and community members still have the same question. 

Lakeisha Collins: Why can't we have investments in all three of these schools? You know what I'm saying? Why can't we have a STEM school in all three schools?

La'Nita Brooks: For Lakeisha Collins, the ninth district state representative, [00:08:00] Choosing between shuttering schools and obtaining a new school should not even be the question. 

Lakeisha Collins: I'm not a supporter of school closures. Um, and the reason why is because I, you know, I'm a mother of two, I'm a mother of three. And I remember when, you know, our communities were hit with the school closures and it was predominantly black and brown communities.

La'Nita Brooks: Collins, who is a single mother, is hosting a Mother's Day block party at UCAN. There's kids and community members dancing the cha cha slide. There's food and a sense of community. Her office consistently creates and puts on events for North Lawndale. 

Lakeisha Collins: Like I'm a single mom. I'm a, I used to be a minimum wage worker.

I was a healthcare worker. I had to work two jobs, still could barely make ends meet. So I understand the struggle. And I couldn't make it to every parent teacher conference. I couldn't make it to every community meeting. Why? Because I was just trying to keep my head above water. And that is what I see in this community too.

La'Nita Brooks: After winning the state rep [00:09:00] seat in 2020, Collins said her strategies to combat North Lawndale struggles was to target the root causes. Romeo believes the root cause cannot be remedied with the closure of schools. 

Dixon Romeo: And people want STEAM. They just don't want to close their schools to get it. 

La'Nita Brooks: The NLCCC pulled their proposal from the table last December.

For NLPCC, this was not a sigh of relief. Instead, they got to work on their own plan. 

Shavon Coleman: They decided at the Board of Education back in December of last year that they weren't going to close the schools or consolidate them at that moment. You know, people got a little relaxed. 

Dixon Romeo: How are you addressing, um, the true needs of the community, right?

Our survey that we, that we put out, um, showed that overwhelmingly in terms of the responses, every time over 60 percent of folks want restorative justice coordinators, folks want dental and health care in the school, they want mental health services in the school, they want job training for parents and community members in the school.

La'Nita Brooks: In essence, [00:10:00] they want sustainable schools and believe the city has the means to make the current schools in the community sustainable. The American Institute for Research, or AIR, created a project for CPS schools where they will evaluate the needs of the schools in order to determine what What resources are lacking in each school?

Sustainable Community Schools have support from the Chicago's Teachers Union, or CTU. They put together a video showcasing their impact. 

Cameron Zakor: They were able to interact with students, um, to run peace circles, to just engage them in discussion about the issues they were facing and, you know, bring a more thoughtful approach to how they could react to those issues.

La'Nita Brooks: That was Cameron Zakor. A teacher and the co founder of Uplift High School. The Sustainable School Pilot Program was launched by CPS in 2018. The goal is to connect the neighborhood families and organizations together. Through this, they are [00:11:00] able to strategically enhance the education experience of students and collectively work towards the betterment of the community.

J'Tou Brown: Having sustainable community schools were part of this loop to stabilize in the lives of young people and families who've had to claw, fight, and scratch for quality education in the city. 

La'Nita Brooks: J'Tou Brown is the National Director for Journey for Justice at Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. Brown was also featured in the same CTU video.

There are currently 20 sustainable community schools located mainly in the south and west sides of the city. The NLPCC is proposing that Lawndale, Sumner, and Crown Elementary be added to the list. 

Dixon Romeo: We deserve abundance in the community. North Lawndale deserves abundance. 

La'Nita Brooks: An abundance North Lawndale will receive.

Whether we upgrade the current schools or bring in a new school, I pray that it is all being done with the community and especially the [00:12:00] children's best interest at heart. North Lawndale is a community, and a community is like a family, and I want to see my family win. 

Shavon Coleman: When they announced back in December that they weren't going to close these schools, people felt some relief, you know, and they felt like we had this thing all wrapped up and there was the victory.

But then now these people are right back trying to push their proposal again, you know, so we got to stay on our toes We can't rest, obviously.

Narrator: Thank you for joining Change Agents, produced by Juneteenth Productions, with funding support from the Chicago Community Trust and the Field Foundation. Please subscribe to our series on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or [00:13:00] wherever you find podcasts. Do you have a story to share? Join us in the ongoing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our website changeagentsthepodcast.com.