For the adjacent Chicago neighborhoods of Little Village and North Lawndale, two working-class, low-income communities (the former predominantly Latino/a and the latter African-American) on the southwest side of the city, the struggle to secure a new state-of-the-art high school has been bittersweet. It's the story of how a school grew out of a hunger strike and how Renaissance 2010 has been used as a wedge to divide communities. And it reveals the competing agendas often resting beneath the banner of small school reform.
The story of the hunger strike dates back to 1998 as community members in Little Village met to address overcrowding in the local community high school. As the most densely populated community in Chicago, Little Village desperately needed a new high school. Young people in the existing neighborhood school were dropping out at a rate of almost 40 percent, noting issues of safety and the school's inability to meet student needs and multiple problems. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) agreed to build a new high school in the Little Village neighborhood.
But instead of building the school, CPS began to develop five selective enrollment magnet schools throughout the city. While the magnet schools held press conferences and groundbreaking ceremonies, the residents of Little Village waited patiently for the announcement of their new school.
Soon after the other high schools were built, community residents from Little Village inquired about their school. CPS informed them that the funds had "dried up" and there was no money for their high school. Outraged residents of Little Village began an organizing campaign that culminated in a 19-day hunger strike, lasting from May 13 to June 2, 2001. The hunger strikers were Latino high school students, teachers, community organizers, community residents, and grandmothers. They erected a campsite at the space originally designated for the high school, which they dubbed "Camp Cesar Chavez." And they fasted for 19 days. Their objective was to bring CPS to the negotiating table. After years of waiting/delay and several weeks of negotiating, CPS decided in early June of 2001 to build a community high school in Little Village.
Over the next three years, a committee of hunger strike veterans, concerned community members, and local organizers assembled architectural design, curriculum, and community inclusion committees to gather ideas on what the community wanted to see in their school. They eventually embraced the school-within-a-school concept, with four schools housed in a multiplex structure. Each school would operate autonomously, while sharing athletic teams, a library, and community services, including adult education programs, a health clinic, and after-school programming (services vitally important to the community that are sometimes squeezed out by the facilities and budget limitations of small school reform projects). After polling the community, the organizers decided to support the following school themes: math, science, and technology; visual and performing arts; world languages; and social justice. I joined the design team for the social justice school.