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School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

youth violence

April 30, 2013

Lametrios West has made a point to separate himself from the trouble around him. Despite heavy rain and steady cracks of lightning, the 14-year-old Kershaw Elementary School student made his way on a recent afternoon to the nearby Teamwork Englewood, a community organization whose after-school programs draw boys and girls from the surrounding area. Here, he holes up to “get out of the neighborhood.”

June 18, 2012
June 18, 2012
June 18, 2012

Arianna Gibson’s preschool teacher lost it at the funeral when she saw the little girl’s unbearably small casket. The principal at Arianna’s school, Libby Elementary, couldn’t stand to see her buried. “Who puts babies in the ground?” Kurt Jones asks.

June 18, 2012

The phones ring at a steady pace.

“Crisis,” Catherine Malatt answers, pulling out a pad of paper. It is a Thursday morning in early May. A principal is calling, with an out-of-control child in his office. Malatt takes notes, asking the principal what he is doing and what his next steps are. Satisfied that he knows what to do, she tells the principal to call back later and tell her how it went.

Close by and within ear-shot, psychologist Daniel Zoller follows up on an incident report about a fight, helping the school’s disciplinarian figure out a response.

June 18, 2012

Only 16 district-run schools have their own full-time social worker, and most of the 16 are turnaround schools that will only have the extra resources temporarily.

One of these is Fenger High in Roseland, a school that CPS points to as a model: Located in a troubled community where violence is common, the extra support provided for students has made a difference, district officials maintain.

Principal Elizabeth Dozier boasts of a sharp—66 percent—decrease in student misconduct reports since she took over in the summer of 2009.

June 18, 2012

After recovering from a devastating illness, Veronica Coney hoped to make a fresh start with her four children in a home she rented in Chicago Lawn.

Then she and her children overheard a murder in the alley. A few weeks later, her children saw a dead body on the street as they were driving to school.  In another incident, one child saw someone holding a gun outside school. The family often heard the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood.

February 06, 2012

In 2010, 70 school-age children from Chicago were killed by gunfire and more than 600 were wounded, according to the Chicago Police Department. Youth violence is widespread, and is the second leading cause of death nationally for people between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

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