Back in December 2003 we sat down with our teacher to brainstorm different ideas and problems that affect our community and us. We actually came up with 89 different problems that affect our community. Some examples of the problems were litter in the park, teenage pregnancy, wanting two presidents, starting kids in the NBA and even stopping Michael Jackson. But what we found out when we looked at the whole list was that most of the problems we listed were about school building.

We decided to focus on our school building. Our school building, Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, has so many problems we do not think it can be fixed. We created web graphic organizer to put down all the ideas we had about what was wrong with our school. Here is a list of all the major problems about our school: the restrooms, office, windows, water fountains, classrooms, temperature, library, outside all need a lot of help. In addition our school does not even have a gym, lunchroom or auditorium/stage. Based on all these problems we think we need a whole new school.

The issue of our building being messed up is serious problem. Our school is not safe, comfortable or a good place to learn because of all these things wrong with it. We think kids deserve to have a safe, comfortable and nice place to learn. Our school is definitely not a good place to learn that is why we need a new school.

The level of government responsible for handling this problem is both the City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools Capital Improvement Program. We learned that they are the agency decision makers about getting new schools built in Chicago. We researched on the Internet, through interviews and newspapers to find out how we could get a new school. We found a lot of information that helped us find out who we needed to talk to and who could help us get a new school. We found our that the main people that decide on new schools in Chicago are the Mayor of Chicago: Mr. Richard Daley, the Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools: Mr. Arne Duncan, the Director of Operations of Chicago Public Schools: Mr. Sean Murphy and the President of the Chicago Public School Board: Mr. Michael Scott. We also found that there were other people that can help influence the decision about new schools being built. These included: congressman, state senators, local school council members and alderman. These people all share the responsibility for dealing with the issue. We talked to all the people so they would support us.

Most people in the community agree that we need a new school. There are a couple of people that think we do not need a new school because they are tearing down the building in Cabrini Green. This is called gentrification. It means that they are tearing down the old buildings and putting up new buildings. We still believe that we need a new building and that there will be other kids that will move here that will need a good school. Everyone we talked to agrees with us that our school needs help. Everybody agrees that we need a new school but a disadvantage is that the city does not have the money to get us a new school. We learned that we were promised a new school six years ago but they have not come through on the promise. Mr. Sean Murphy even told our principal that he couldn’t find the money for us because he lost it.

The advantages of getting a new school are that we could learn in a clean and better school. All schools should be equal and ours it not. The policy that exists is called the CIP or Capital Improvement Program. It is based on the Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education. From this we learned that all schools need to be equal. We do not feel that the policy CIP is adequate. It is not good enough because our school is not equal to others.

We chose this problem because we want a new school that is better and equal to other schools.