Chicago Tribune
CNT is a strategic partner to a new small high school that will open at Lucy Flower High School on the West Side next fall. The curriculum will focus on the East and West Garfield Park communities. Students will use computer mapping to analyze the community’s human and natural systems. Then, in the spirit of its namesake, civil rights leaders Al Raby, students will be encouraged to provide leadership for positive changes. The newly-approved small school was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune.
By Ana Beatriz Cholo, Tribune staff reporter
January 15, 2004
Environmental issues and social justice will be the focus of a new “small school” to open in September at the now-shuttered Lucy Flower Academy in West Garfield Park, schools officials said Wednesday.
Named after a prominent West Side civil rights activist who helped persuade Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to concentrate on civil rights issues in Chicago, the Al Raby School for Community and Environment is one of five new small public high schools expected to begin classes in the fall.
The newest batch of small high schools, which generally have fewer than 500 students, are being funded in large part by a $7.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. There are now 11 such schools in operation.
Along with a college prep curriculum, students at Raby will be exposed to a curriculum that will be heavy on research skills and computer technology. School founders say they hope students will become agents of social change and play a role in solving some of the problems that plague the surrounding community.
Lucy Flower, located across from Garfield Park Conservatory, had been struggling academically before it closed last year.
“I think the parents and community are savvy enough to not have a past reputation cloud over a new opportunity,” said Mary Nelson, the president of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation that has been in West Garfield Park for 25 years.
“They’ve got to be convinced that this is going to be the best place for them,” Nelson said of the parents. “The curriculum may sound radical but it will help them get their kids into the next step in life.”
Applications for the incoming freshman class are available, and school officials say they will accept about 125 students. Ultimately, enrollment is expected to reach 400 students. Although the school is open to any student in the city, officials hope that most will come from the West Side neighborhood.
A second small high school will be added to the campus, located at 3545 W. Fulton Blvd., in September 2005, officials said.
Stephen Perkins, senior vice president for the Center for Neighborhood Technology, came up with the concept for school and decided to name it after Raby, who fought against segregation in city schools and, in particular, against “Willis Wagons”–the mobile classrooms nicknamed for former Supt. Benjamin C. Willis that were set up in African-American communities.
Copyright c 2004, Chicago Tribune
