Wind whips across the football field on a chilly March day as students wearing white and blue tumble off the 63^rd Avenue bus and walk up Stewart Avenue. Passing a candy salesman, one young woman stops to look over his wares.

In a plastic-lined box, skittles, gummy worms, and candy bars are neatly stacked. She reaches down and grabs a bag of M&M’s. “I like these,” she said, handing the man 50 cents before running to catch up with her friends.

She meets up with them as they pass through the gate in the fence. They enter the building though the only doors they are allowed to use. On the door is a sign. “All persons entering this building are subject to search.” This is Englewood High School.

Classified as a failing school for the past nine years, Englewood faces the possibility of closure under Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 plan. In February, the Chicago Public School (CPS) board voted to approve changing the attendance boundaries for incoming students. Parents and teachers see as a first step to the closing of Englewood, located near 63^rd and the expressway.

The classification of a school as “failing” has drastic implications for students, teachers and democratically-elected local school councils. For example, students who graduate from such schools often find it particularly difficult to get accepted into universities. Parents, teachers, and school councils are forced to cede a high degree of control to the school board.

Despite the classification of “failing”, Englewood has a history of students doing well. Students have placed highly in the citywide science fair and the school’s debate team has won high honors.

And students still see Englewood as a community school.

“Englewood was not my school of last resort,” said Latoyia Kimbrough, a member of Englewood’s debate team. “It was my first choice. I choose Englewood because my parents live in Englewood, my friends are in Englewood. Englewood is my community.”

There has been substantial pressure for students to pass the Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE), the primary benchmark that CPS uses to define achieving and failing schools. If less than 30 percent of the students in a school pass with a “satisfactory” score, the school can be put on academic probation.

Englewood’s PSAE scores have been low for years. In 2003, less than 5 percent of students passed the PSAE. But the significance of these figures is questionable. Englewood has a large population of special education students. Add the fact that the student population has a truancy problem and the numbers the CPS gives out seem stilted. Social service workers in the school estimate that 80 percent of the students who miss school do so because they can’t afford bus fare.

Many students and parents put the blame for continued low scores on the CPS Board.

“The teachers didn’t fail, the students didn’t fail, CPS failed,” charges Hal Baskin, an Englewood resident speaking at a community forum seeking public input on the potential closing. “[The board] didn’t put money into the children.”

CPS has spent $2.75 million at Englewood over the three years. According to Arne Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, only $250,000 of that has been spent on books.

Keith Nellums, a junior at Englewood, says the only thing he’s noticed money spent on is metal detectors.

“If they give us the books and the things we need to learn, we’d be able to do better on the exams.” Keith added.

Entering Englewood, one can’t avoid the metal detectors. Only one set of doors is open for students and visitors to enter. The brown brick flooring of the main entrance hall and the white cider block construction attest to the building’s functional aesthetic. Plaques for achievement in sports and academics surround the perimeter of the two-story sunlit foyer. The honors and basketball championships attest to the school’s history—something not taken into account in the PSA exams.

A guard watches at the door of each one of the staircases on every floor. Three flights up and to the right are the Social Science rooms where Jackson Potter waits for his morning classes to start.

A graduate of Whitney Youth High School on the city’s West Side, Potter teaches American and World History and coaches Englewood’s debate team. He types away on an ancient laptop, still without the upgrade promised by CPS and common in Chicago’s higher achieving schools. The room is of the same austere white cider block as the rest of the building. Thirty desks stretch in double rows to the back of the room.

Under each desk is a set of history books. These books date from 2003 and cover African-American History and how it has shaped the broader culture.

The buzzer rings as students continue to filter in. It’s 8:45 in the morning, and Potter’s freshman World History class seems restless. He asks them to take five minutes and write down their thoughts on two quotes on the board. One is by Booker T. Washington. “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.” A few rest their chin on their hand. Others poke at their friends, trying to get their attention. Most stare intensely at the quotes and jot down a few sentences.

“I think that 75 percent of my students don’t get a real breakfast,” Potter says later. He also adds that students aren’t helped by coming to class hungry.

The Englewood cafeteria offers breakfast to students on a needs-based basis. According to Potter, over 90 percent of students qualify for free breakfast, but many can’t make it to school before the cafeteria closes.

Experts agree with him on the need for well-fed students. According to a 1998 study published by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, children who ate a regular breakfast exhibited better behavior, higher standardized test scores, and less hyperactivity. Despite such evidence, Chicago recently approved cutting the number of students eligible for free lunches and raised the cost of discounted lunches for many students.

Thursday is library day, and Potter leads his freshman class to use Englewood’s only open computer lab accessible to Englewood’s students. Students use the lab to research the ancient Roman gladiator games. Supplied with a list of websites, they track down facts and information to use later to write an essay.

Some students need to double up on the computers. In the main computer room, a few newer Dells, some older IBMs and a Tandy sit on plain tan desks. The eleven working computers in this room are in various states of repair. Out in the main library, students have access to four newer Dells.

Englewood has two other computer labs, but both are limited to classroom use. The library offers the only free open lab space to students. Oftentimes, students can only access lab is during lunch, if another class is not using it. In essence, about 900 students have to share about 15 computers.

Potter said that Englewood was scheduled to receive more computers, but has yet to see them.

Such a dearth of computer access is also tied to developments on the federal level. The General Accounting Office recently charged the FCC with mishandling the E-rate program, the $14 billion program created to bring computers and Internet access to schools. Had it been handled correctly, CPS would have received an additional $50 million that could have gone to students like those in Englewood.

The computer costs-and worries for principals-keep coming. Recently, CPS sent an e-mail to the district’s more than 600 principals informing them that they would have to pay a $2 network fee for each computer. The money has to come out of each school’s discretionary budget, funds that could be used for art programs, to hire more teachers, buy classroom supplies such as paper and maps, and fix computers.  

Teachers and students are also concerned about the change in attendance boundaries. Instead of attending the same school that some of their bothers and sisters go to, new freshman will be shipped off to four surrounding high schools.

Not only are all four schools—Hyde Park, Hirsch, Dyett Academy, and Robeson—classified by CPS as failing schools, but students also face real dangers of crossing gang lines.  Even as students and parents pleaded at the February board meeting, CPS’s response was that the problem was “manageable.”

But pressure from the community and the teacher’s union is persuading the board to back off a bit. The Chicago Teachers Union had entered into negotiations with the school board to make Englewood a partnership school. That would mean the union would have more control of the school’s budget, teaching programs and hiring. Right now, the board holds a tight reign over Englewood. The Local School Council (LSC), democratically elected from the community, would normally be in charge of budgeting and teaching programs. But once a school is labeled “failing”, the LSC loses much of its control

A sore spot for many community activists has been the CPS School Board’s eight-year oversight of Englewood’s administration and teaching program, which has resulted in no improvement in test scores. Rev. Robin Hood of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) argues that the parents and community residents could do a better job than the board. “The bottom line,” says Hood, “is if you give parents input—community input—they could build a model school, because they are the ones living there.”

But CPS has limited public input since Englewood has been put on probation. For the past eight years, the LSC has had Englewood’s Principal and administrative staff picked for them. The CPS Board chooses the principal and sends the choice to the LSC. The choice was not up for debate, just approval. Before being on probation, the Englewood LSC was able to interview multiple candidates and choose who they felt could best teach their children.

In the next few months, the board might have no choice but to listen to the community. Even if Englewood becomes a partnership school, there will still be the issue of the attendance boundary change. But residents and students have vowed to turn up the heat in creative and disruptive ways by taking the fight to the board members until the board reverses its decision.

Stay tuned.