North Side College Preparatory High School
(NSCP) is bursting with youth, energy and high
hopes. Its new facility, new staff and the students
themselves personify the hopes we all have for a
bright future. The Center for Neighborhood
Technology's Connecting Communities summits
are an exercise in looking systematically at the
future, especially in the area of transportation and
community-building. CNT was provided an
opportunity to conduct an abbreviated summit at
North Side College Preparatory High School. The
results of this special session at the school are
reported here.
*
The students at North Side College Preparatory
High School come from all over the city but are
predominantly North-siders. The school is very
diverse but students had a common set of high
expectations for themselves, their leaders and
their communities. The students are eager to take
a leadership role in transportation planning; "The
public should be involved in local and regional
planning" was the most highly ranked statement
in the values section of the questionnaire.
The two classes that participated in the mini-
summit were almost evenly divided between male
and female students. Five of the students were
Asian, five black, eight Hispanic, 18 white, and
three catagorized themselves as other/biracial.
Transit and "cars, with others" were the two most
likely modes used by the students, with "walking"
being the most frequently cited third choice mode.
Some students walk as often as 10 and 20 times a
week; others (nine others) make no trips on foot.
Only two students say that their most likely
choice right now is to bike, although nine others
listed biking as a second or third choice. The
flexibility to travel by multiple modes was valued
very highly, second only to the concern about
congestion.
Virtually all of the students lived near transit of
one kind or another. Of the 25 students who used
transit, the average number of trips last month was
32. Children under 14 in the students' families
had very different travel-to-school patterns.
Fifteen families drove their younger children to
school, 10 families relied on bus service and in
only two families did children walk to school.
NSCP students travel to a wide variety of places
in the city and suburbs. Their reported destina-
tions ranged from downtown Chicago to northern
Lake County and from the lakefront to the west
and northwest suburbs. Parks, zoos, sports stadi-
ums, movie theaters and shopping areas were very
popular destinations. The lakefront was a highly
regarded destination.
*
At the invitation of Julie Peterson, Environmental Science teacher at NSCP, CNT staff conducted a mini-summit during
two class periods on May 11, 2001, consisting primarily of a rapid version of the Transopoly game and the survey (which
not all students were able to complete due to time constraints). Thirteen students from NSCP also attended the North Side
Connecting Communities summit on May 19, 2001; some had participated in this mini-summit and some hadn't.
North Side College Preparatory High School Students
Look to the Future
SPECIAL REPORT
ADDENDUM TO THE
Chicago-North Connecting Communities Summit
