Organizers, parents and students on Tuesday called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to intervene and stop the phasing out of Harper High School in West Englewood.
About a dozen students walked out of class Tuesday morning in protest of the shuttering and to demand more quality Englewood schools.
“We want this high school restored as a sustainable community school,” said Jitu Brown, national director of Journey for Justice Alliance. “There are more than enough people in Englewood ... for more than one high school.”
The city’s school board voted unanimously in 2018 to close Harper along with three other Englewood schools because of declining enrollment. Chicago Public Schools decided to allow current students to stay through graduation.
Harper High School had nearly 1,000 students in 2009; there were only 87 last year, according to CPS records. Enrollment data for this school year hasn’t been released but is expected to be lower.
Brown said declining enrollment in Englewood schools is a result of the city disinvesting in schools. If a school provided adequate programming, he argued, kids would flock to it.
“We know that school closings is all about moving black people out of the city of Chicago,” Brown said. “It has nothing to do with education. It has nothing to do with what’s in the best interest of our children.”
CPS opened a new $85 million neighborhood school this year. STEM Englewood is the first new school in the community since the 1970s. Its inaugural freshmen class has more than 400 students.
While praising the new high school, Bobbie Brown, a parent and president of Harper’s Local School Council, said it’s been a tumultuous couple of years as her school’s resources were depleted. She said years of overall disinvestment in Englewood schools has resulted in the area’s decline.
“It’s sad that our children have to continue to fight for what we need in our neighborhood,” she said.
She asked Lightfoot to “come and see our schools, and see how they disinvested in” them.
The rally was part of Journey for Justice Alliance’s “Equity Bus Tour” series which kicked off in Paterson, New Jersey, in August. The tour will be held in 20 cities across the country drawing attention to equity in public schools.
Manny Ramos is a corps member of Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of Chicago’s South Side and West Side.