When Will We Learn?

Calumet High School was closed and converted into a Charter School, in Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to provide better education designed to leave no child behind. However, Calumet, located on Chicago’s Southside, was the only high school in the neighborhood, serving ten elementary feeder schools. Therefore, several children will be left behind or killed while crossing rival gang territory, in their pursuit of a high school diploma.

Ironically, there was no mass protest by concerned parents or local leaders to block the closure; Oddly, the only protest at Calumet High School (1995) occurred when the school decided to ban the wearing of black and red Air Jordan’s: colors worn by one of the gangs that plague the community.

If nothing else, the poverty level of the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood strongly vetoes closing Calumet. Closure forces community parents to find a school that their children can attend without venturing far from their neighborhood; this requires paying daily bus fare on a shoestring budget. As a result, many students will be forced to miss classes because their parents cannot afford the astronomical bus fare required to transport children to and from school. Calumet was closed, and parents’ of the community are left to fend for themselves in their quest to provide their children with a high school education.

Sadly, parents of high school students in the Auburn Gresham community can only hope that as their children go to and from school that they do not meet the same fate as 16 year old Derrion Albert, who was beaten to death at Fenger High School. Albert, too, was forced out of his community of Altgeld Gardens because Carver High School, the only high school in the community, was closed and reopened as a Charter School. When will we learn?