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Pupils welcome all to see their dreary reality
Eric Zorn
March 23, 2004
It was sunny and clear Monday morning in Chicago, but every day is a foggy day
in Room 405 of Byrd Community Academy.
The huge windows in teacher Brian Schultz's 5th-grade classroom are of
bulletproof plastic that has frosted over with age, like nearly every other
window in the four-story building.
The only transparent panel in the room is a small, cracked rectangle of glass
that allows the pupils a view of their rival public elementary school, Jenner
Academy of the Arts, a recently built $15 million facility that sits in mocking
splendor just across a ball field from Byrd.
The contrast is sharp, and one of the spurs that's prompted Schultz's 16
pupils, most of them residents of the nearby Cabrini-Green housing development,
to mount a campaign to try to persuade officials to make good on dormant plans
to build a school for them.
"Jenner kids say Byrd's a dump," said Shaquice Davis, 12, one of five
pupils who took me on a grievance tour Monday. "This school seems like
it's 100 years old."
Actually it's only 44, but showing its age. The translucent windows, several of
them in the building pocked by bullet holes, rattle as the wind slips in. And
since most thermostats are broken, temperatures fluctuate between the low 60s
and mid 80s according to a daily chart the pupils are keeping.
Sinks and water fountains leak, the bathrooms are dingy and buggy, and fences,
doors and light fixtures are in disrepair.
The pupils came up with a long list of complaints about their school in
December as part of a brainstorming session for Project Citizen, a civic
education program that asks students to identify a problem in their community
and address it systematically.
Schultz said he expected the kids to choose to tackle a small issue--the lack
of variety in drink options at lunch, say--but instead they took aim at a major
problem of which most of the smaller problems are mere symptoms; a problem
that's been vexing administrators for more than four decades: Byrd Academy is a
fundamentally inadequate elementary school.
For reasons lost to history, even though architects intended it to serve 1,200
pupils, it has no auditorium or large meeting area, no gymnasium and no
lunchroom. Pupils eat lunch in one hallway, hold assemblies in another hallway
and walk to a nearby Park District field house for gym class.
The 5th graders wrote an 11-point action plan. It included noting and
photographing the school's shortcomings, surveying the 377-member student body
(85 percent of respondents said they wanted a new building) and researching the
evolving construction funding plans for public schools. Then, last month they
began an aggressive letter and e-mail campaign targeting elected officials,
journalists and decision-makers within the school system.
"We would like to invite you to see our school for yourself," said
their letter. "We do not think that you would let your kids come to a
school that is falling apart."
Several influential people, including two state legislators, have either
visited or agreed to visit.
Principal Joseph Gartner and Eric Sloss, local school council president, have
lent their full support to the project, saying something needs to be done.
Nearly all capital improvement projects at Byrd were put on hold in the
mid-'90s when the central office pledged to tear down the school and build a
new one right next to Jenner.
Assistant Principal Cheryl James said Project Citizen "is already a
success because of what it's taught the kids about solving problems without
arguing, fighting and threatening."
The bad news for the pupils is that, this year, money is finally on the way to
fix some of the cosmetic issues--the perpetually foggy windows, for
instance--that give their plight such poignancy.
This is bad news because it signals that the wrecking ball is not about to
swing. CPS Department of Operations chief Sean Murphy all but confirmed Monday
that the school system is no longer in a position to spend another $15 million
or more for another elementary building in the neighborhood, and its far more
likely that, given the declining enrollment trends due to gentrification,
Jenner school will ultimately absorb Byrd's population.
"We can raise the money ourselves," said Daviel Bonds, 11, in the
same audacious spirit that launched the pupils' effort. "We'll have a
carwash!"
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune