Mentors make a differenceDebra WilliamsNine years ago, the George M. Pullman Educational Foundation created a program at Fenger High School in the Roseland community to find out how to get more minority students out of high school and into college.
While the "Building Your Future" program was only ademonstration project and has since been discontinued, it offers important lessons.
Lesson No. 1: With mentoring and support from adults, it is possible to get more kids into college, even kids in low-performing schools who never considered higher education. The guidance helps them set realistic career goals,... > Read More |
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Overcrowded school serves displaced studentsDan WeissmannThe population shifts of the 1990s have tipped the scales at Schubert Elementary in Belmont Cragin.
In the 1980s, the Far Northwest Side school was a "receiving school," with more than a third of its students bused in from overcrowded schools on the West Side. By the mid-1990s, gentrification in West Town and Logan Square had pushed many Latino families west into Belmont Cragin and moved immigrant ports of entry to the west as well.
As a result, Schubert was stretched to the seams trying to serve all the children in the newly crammed attendance area. In 1996, the School Board... > Read More |
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How three families are dealing with displacementDan WeissmannGentrification has a downside: Lower-income families often can't afford to remain in their communities. Catalyst interviewed three families who have been affected by gentrification in West Town and Logan Square, where rising rents and housing prices have forced many families out of their homes and schools. According to the Chicago Association of Realtors, median home prices in both community areas more than doubled in the late 1990s, and the number of condominium sales tripled.
The Salazars
Sneaking in
For years the Salazar family moved from apartment... > Read More |
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Gentrifiers give Chicago Public Schools a chanceDan WeissmannWhen Molly Fox began for looking for suitable schools for her two young sons, she didn't buy into conventional wisdom.
"Everybody was saying, 'There's no such thing as a good public school in Chicago,'" she recalls. Even magnet schools were getting a bad rap. "One mother said to me, 'That would be tantamount to child abuse.'"
Molly was skeptical. "It can't possibly be that bad."
Still, she and her husband, Ari, whose career change from corporate attorney to high-end food retailer brought the family to Chicago, initially considered private schools.
"All the... > Read More |
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Roscoe Village groupDan Weissmanntwo years ago, Chad Harrell invited three neighbors over to his back yard and asked them for advice about schools. He had been living in Roscoe Village for nearly 10 years—seven as a homeowner—and had spent the last few years working with a local community group, Roscoe Village Neighbors, to turn the area into the kind of place where he wanted to stay.
Now he was the father of a 10-month-old son, and in a few years he would have to figure out where to send him to school. The magnet school system didn't appeal to him, and he didn't want to abandon the neighborhood in which he had... > Read More |
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Gentrifiers slow to buy CPSDan WeissmannIn the last half of the 1990s, young professionals streamed into the city, snapping up high-priced condominiums and urban townhomes. In the hottest areas, mainly on the North Side and in and around the Loop, property values have soared, bringing rents and property taxes along with them.
Arguably, if such gentrification has given the city a facelift, it has only added wrinkles to the public school system, a Catalyst analysis of school attendance patterns shows.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has made it clear that he sees public schools as pivotal to keeping these... > Read More |
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