New school in Austin may ease tension at Clemente
By Stacie Johnson
Over the past school year there has been much talk about the rising violence and tension at Chicago Public Schools (CPS) receiving students from closed schools as a result of the City’s school reformation plan, Renaissance 2010.
A new charter school opening this fall in one West Side community may help alleviate the burden at other West Side and West Town schools.
The Austin community, Chicago’s largest district to lack a local public high school, will once again have a high school for area residents. CPS officials confirmed that the Austin Business & Entre-preneurship Academy, located at 231 N. Pine Ave., will open its doors this fall.
The contract school, managed by the American Quality Schools Corporation in partnership with the Westside Ministers Coalition, the Austin African-American Business Networking Association, and Allstate Insurance, has been approved by the Chicago Board of Education for 300 students, although some working closely with this project say the school is prepared for fewer than that for this school pilot year.
Rev. Lewis Flowers, chief executive officer of the Westside Ministers Coalition, noted that the school has 250 students enrolled, but that administrators were prepared “only for 200, 230 max,” he said. The larger enrollment “defeats the purpose of small schools, but if we get 250 we’ll do it, we’ll deal with it,” he said.
Rev. Flowers said the objective of getting this school up and running, as well as making adjustments for accepting more students this school year, was to provide schooling for the 200 or so students who had not been going to school at all after graduating from eighth grade since the closing of Austin High School.
“Every year we have about 800 students that come out of eighth grade, and they are assigned to a school by CPS,” said Rev. Flowers. “But just because the children have been assigned to a school doesn’t mean that they’re going to go. Many of those kids are not going to cross gang territory.” Still, many do. Since 2004, the Austin community’s students have been assigned by CPS to William H. Wells Community Academy, George W. Collins High School, and Roberto Clemente High School, all Chicago West Side or West Town high schools, all with students with different gang affiliations and presences.
For Clemente High School, located in the West Town/Humboldt Park community, the opening of the new contract school in Austin could not come during a more crucial time. Over the course of the 2005- 2006 school year, fights and other forms of violence as well as racial and gang tensions increased at
Clemente, which saw 55 violent incidents in the first five months of the school year, according to CPS records. Clemente’s student population is 55% Puerto Rican, 30% Mexican and Central American, 14% African-American, and 1% Vietnamese.
Compounding those problems, the school has been without a permanent principal since February when Irene DaMota, who had led the school for ten years, resigned. The school’s LSC still is in the process of suggesting candidates to fill the position.
In the meantime, the Chicago Board of Education has appointed Leonard Kennebrew to serve as interim principal this upcoming school year, relieving Vice Principal William Conard from his fill-in role as lead administrator, said Mike Vaughn, a CPS spokesman.
In addition to gang and racial or ethnic tensions, Austin parents and students have also complained about the long commute to the schools like Clemente that are outside the Austin neighborhood; travel time by bus from Austin to Clemente runs 30 to 45 minutes. Commute-related expenses are another problem, with a reduced fare pass for students costing $20 per week.
Ten different Chicago middle schools now have an average of 100 eighth grade each who would have attended Austin High School. As all these schools are in outlying areas, Austin families must pay for busing. CPS has yet to solve these issues, but addressed other concerns voiced by Clemente teachers and staff and by parents and community members from both communities.
CPS has added security guards and even voted to change the attendance boundaries of Austin, thus limiting the number of schools Austin students could attend.
Now, Austin community high schoolers may enroll at Manley, Marshall, or Orr high schools. Thanks to the Austin Business & Entrepreneurship Academy, there are at least 230 students this fall who will be allowed to stay in their community attending the new school.
The opening of the new school is a plus but still falls short of the terms of a 2004 agreement between the Chicago Board of Education and the Austin community. When the board voted to close Austin’s high school in 2004, it agreed to replace Austin High School with three small schools and open them for the beginning of the 2006-07 school year.
That has not happened, despite the fact that nearly 100 other schools have opened around the city in recent years. The Renaissance 2010 plan calls for opening 15 to 20 “renaissance” schools each year from now through 2010.
