Grand Boulevard Federation

The Bronzeville Education Report: The Community Planning Process

The Grand Boulevard Federation and its Education Committee, over the past three years, have been active in working to support school improvement in Bronzeville. The Federation participated in a major planning process sponsored by the Chicago Public Schools to develop a plan for improving the quality of schools in the Mid-South communities of Douglas, Grand Boulevard and North Kenwood, Oakland, and the northern end of Washington Park. The Education Committee has had discussions and meetings with several organizations who wanted us to support their starting new schools under the Renaissance 2010 Initiative, which supplanted the Mid-South planning process. The Education Committee worked with the community and advocacy groups to highlight the way Renaissance 2010, the Mid-South planning process and CPS’s behavior in closing schools failed to adequately reach out and involve parents and community in the planning and decision making process.

Despite these activities, the Education Committee was not satisfied with the level and nature of community involvement and input in the school reform and improvement process. We wanted parents, youth, the educators who actually work in our schools and concerned community residents to have a greater opportunity to express their own views about what is needed to improve our schools and then support them in taking action to implement those recommendations. We also wanted policy makers and those interested in opening new schools in our community to know what the community thinks is important for our schools to improve and for our children’s opportunities for academic advancement to increase.

The Bronzeville Education Report [PDF document] resulted from these concerns. It represents nine months of work by the Grand Boulevard Federation’s Education Committee and its partners and allies. Over 200 persons were interviewed, participated in focus groups or completed surveys and questionnaires. They told us about what they thought was working in our schools and what needed to happen to improve school quality and student performance.

Through an inclusive community planning process, the Bronzeville Education Report was developed to emphasize two primary areas: Critical elements for achieving high quality schools and solutions for helping to make our schools better. GBF facilitated and engaged the community in a six-month community planning process from February 2005 – August 2005 where we held focus groups and had individual one-on-one meetings to learn from and document community stakeholders’ goals, visions, expectations, challenges, and solutions for creating higher quality schools for Bronzeville. The community participants included parents, educators, youth, and community residents and groups. In addition to having a first-round of 1:1’s and focus groups, GBF then held two ‘Report-Out’ sessions in August 2005 to share the feedback with the groups who participated and to invite new groups to participate. Revisions to the document were made accordingly. More than 200 people participated in the planning process, including parents, educators, community residents and leaders, and youth. 30 schools, or 75% of the schools in the service area, were represented which included parents, teachers, or principal input. Additionally, 17 principals and assistant principals participated. Charter and contract schools were also involved in this effort and have shown support to increase support and resources towards our neighborhood schools that have often been neglected.

GBF held a community-wide Education Town Hall Summit in November 2005 to inform the community of results of the final Bronzeville Education Report, prioritize one community-selected actionable recommendation, and begin to strategize about turning the report into a working document. After a 9-month process of 1:1’s, hosting focus groups, and meeting with the community, the Bronzeville Education Report reflects the community’s recommendations and requirements we need to see occur if we want to move towards creating high quality schools for all families. As a result, the report outlines 7 critical educational elements that every school must have.

The report also provides recommendations and solutions that individuals, schools, community’s, and the Chicago Public Schools as a whole can correct, improve upon, or develop in order to affect the 7 critical elements for improving schools.