CPS to Austin high school area parents and students:
“DROP DEAD”
I was very hesitant about writing this article because I found it very hard to believe what was there for all to see:
The Chicago Public School System has abandoned most of the high school students who live in Austin, the largest community within the City of Chicago.
In April 2006, two years after the Chicago Board of Education voted to stop admitting 9th graders into Austin High School, the sign announcing “Renaissance 2010” plans for the school building was becoming a bitter joke for the thousands of high school age children in the Austin community. After lying to the community by telling people he was going to solve the school’s gang problems by holding back 9th graders for one year, Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan then made Austin part of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “Renaissance 2010” program and eliminated the school entirely, leaving Austin without a general high school for its teenagers. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.I spoke to some high ranking officials in the Chicago Public Schools central office and asked the following question: Is there a high school located within the Austin Community that is required by official Board of Education policy, to enroll students who live in the Austin community? After much backing and filling, the answer is NO.
Think about that for a moment. The largest community within the City of Chicago does not have a high school with in its boundaries that must enroll students who live there.
When I was growing up in Mississippi in the 1940s and early 1950s, there was only one high school in the whole county for Blacks. Students who lived too far to walk were just out of luck. Meanwhile whites had six high schools that Blacks had to help fund. A young lady who graduated with me in 1953 was five years older than the rest of us because it took her that long to find a way to get to high school.
Here now in the 21st century, a New Millennium, many Black students in the largest community in Chicago have to fend for themselves to get to a high school in some other part of town.
For the past several weeks I have been working with the Austin Community Education Network which is a coalition of community organizations and individuals. Some of the organizations involved are: Westside Ministers Coalition, Westside Health Authority, and South Austin Community Coalition. Mad Dads and others.
Based upon the best information that we have been able to get from CPS, there are a large number of students in Austin that do not have a high school assignment for September. What has happened in Austin follows a pattern that has begun to unfold in Black communities in Chicago. The school is closed, privatized and turned over to white operators. Calumet, South Shore, Bowen, Cregier, Orr, Collins. There may be others, including some elementary schools.
How could this have happened? Where were/are our leaders, elected and otherwise? What can we do about it now? My personal view is that the community should come together and demand two things:
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That the Austin High School facility be restored to a regular comprehensive high school, until
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A new state of the art high school is built within the Austin community
I urge all to get involved. You are powerless only if you think you are powerless.
