Features

Education | Features

Shimer College Leaves the South Side

An uncertain future for the small, strange Great Books school

by 1 week ago

Lizzie Smith

Three students—an apprentice violin-maker, a veteran, and an aspiring novelist—sit around a sparse but cozy room in a college residence hall in west suburban Naperville. The eclectic trio makes up about one-tenth of the student body of what is now called the Shimer Great Books School, a program of North Central College and the latest iteration of a storied 165-year-old Illinois institution. Just this past September, campus building Seybert Hall became Shimer’s central administrative locale after the school was acquired by North Central. Prior to that, it independently operated as its own accredited institution for about a decade while renting space on the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Bronzeville campus.

Features | Food | Politics | Woodlawn

God’s Little Acres

First Presbyterian Church has fostered community gardens since the nineteenth century. Its now-former pastor nearly put an end to that.

by 2 weeks ago 4 Comments

Jason Schumer

For D’onminique Boyd, it was the 65th Street Community Garden that turned Woodlawn into a home. She had moved there in 2011, and had taken to biking around to familiarize herself with the neighborhood. One morning, she biked by the garden and saw Tony Samford, 65th Street’s “godfather of gardening,” as she would later come to call him, tending to his plot. She asked what he was growing; he told her to come back the next day at 6am, and he would teach her.

Agriculture | Features | Food | Politics

A Lot to Lose

After the near-sale of a community garden in West Englewood, questions arise about what it takes for gardens on the South Side to stay afloat.

by 4 weeks ago

Courtesy State Rep. Sonya Harper

How’s the community garden doing?” That’s a question that 6th District State Representative Sonya Harper asks in most of her meetings with the city of Chicago, just for good measure. The city’s response to Harper is usually that the garden is doing fine, and that nothing’s changed.

Education | Features

Losing Harper High School

In a good school-bad school paradigm, Harper High School’s rich hundred-plus-year history risks being forgotten

by 2 months ago 4 Comments

L-R: Helen Tyner, Derrick Lawson, Sherry Williams (Maggie O'Brien)

Harper High School is the oldest neighborhood school in Englewood. Over the last century,  thousands of residents have graduated from there. Yet last month, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close Harper High School in the next few years. It is, by all accounts, considered a failing school. But for those who go to Harper now, the decision threatens to tear apart the social fabric that’s been woven across generations.

Education | Features | Politics

Why Is CPS Closing NTA?

Before NTA conversion proposal, emails reveal multiyear history to the plans for a new neighborhood high school

by 2 months ago 1 Comment

Lizzie Smith

The Near South Side is one step closer to getting a new neighborhood high school—and the National Teachers Academy (NTA), an elementary school for a small but densely populated strip of the area, is one step closer to closing its doors. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Board of Education approved Chicago Public Schools’ controversial Near South Education Plan, which will repurpose the elementary school’s campus as the site of the new high school.

Development | Features | Housing Issue 2018 | Pilsen | Politics

Who Pulls the Strings on the PLUC?

Pilsen’s Land Use Committee draws heat for cozy relationship with its alderman

by 3 months ago 1 Comment

Ellen Hao

They don’t want to give agendas to the community. They don’t want to give us anything,” reflected Anderson Chávez, a youth organizer with the Pilsen Alliance. The “they” Chávez was referring to is the Pilsen Land Use Committee (PLUC), an advisory committee set up by Alderman Daniel Solis (25th) to advise him on large-scale developments seeking a home in Pilsen. PLUC is intended to represent the community voice in decision making and uphold an only-in-Pilsen mandate of twenty-one percent affordable housing in all new developments over eight units. The committee is comprised of executives from four local nonprofits: The Resurrection Project, Alivio Medical Center, Eighteenth Street Development Corporation, and the Pilsen Neighbors Community Council.