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A breeze of hope blows in the Windy City

Mary Schmich

By Mary Schmich

Published Sept. 6,2018

A breeze of hope blows in the Windy City
	
	Teachers and administrators welcome students and parents to the first day of the school year at the newly merged Jenner Academy of the Arts and Ogden International School, in Chicago. Chicago Tribune

On a corner of the neighborhood once known as Cabrini-Green, outside the school previously known as Jenner Academy of the Arts, Tuesday was more than the first day of school. It was a day history was made in Chicago.


Dorie Bell-Washington was one of many people who was jittery the night before.


"I slept three hours," she said, standing on the sidewalk in a swarm of parents, children, teachers and cops. "It's like today is my first day of school."


Bell-Washington is the mother of three boys, and this year, as Jenner merges with Ogden International School, her 6-year-old son DaMari was about to get on a yellow school bus. He would ride away from familiar Jenner territory, where vacant lots from demolished Cabrini high-rises still await development, to the foreign land of Ogden, on the pricey Gold Coast a few blocks east.


"I'm nervous," DaMari said.


About what?


"If the school bus get bumping," he said.


While some of the kids Tuesday were worried about things like bumpy bus rides -- and whether they'd make friends over at the new school -- the adults were more inclined to focus on the big question:


Would this grand experiment in desegregation work in the famously segregated city of Chicago?


The merger of Ogden and Jenner was a solution born of two seemingly separate problems at two very different schools.


Ogden's elementary campus on the Gold Coast has served an ethnically diverse but predominantly well-to-do student body. It's been overcrowded.


Jenner, the last remaining school of several that once served the Cabrini-Green housing project, was vastly underused. Almost all its students were black and poor, and it was threatened with closure.


A building with too many kids. Another with not enough. Only a mile apart.


The solution may look obvious, but it wasn't simple.


In 2014, Robert Croston became principal at Jenner. Not long afterward, when Michael Beyer took the principal's job at Ogden, Croston emailed him with a radical notion.


As Beyer once recalled it: "He said, 'Congratulations. There's this idea floating around about merging our two schools. Whenever you get settled, give me a call.'"


Croston was black. Beyer was white. Both were young and energetic. Together they led the push to bring the student bodies together, channeling the younger kids -- kindergarten through fourth grade -- into Ogden and the older kids -- fifth through eighth grade -- into Jenner.


Finally, seven months ago, after two years of work and arguments in the communities, Chicago Public Schools approved the merger, a victory quickly shadowed by loss. In March, at the age of 34, Croston died.


But his presence remained vivid on Tuesday, the day his dream came true.


Outside what's now known as Ogden's "Jenner campus," Beyer stood at the cafeteria entry, high-fiving students, wearing one of Croston's bow ties, in Croston's favorite color, purple.


Inside, the school had changed over the summer. Before, Jenner students didn't have lockers; now lockers lined the hallways. The place had a clean new sheen and a lot of new furniture. It had a library again, and even a 3D printer. A mural of Croston was freshly painted on a cafeteria wall.


Combining the schools has meant shuffling a lot of things around. Students, teachers, staff. And stuff.


Some of Ogden's athletic trophies now sit in Jenner's glass cases. Some of Jenner's art now hangs on Ogden's walls. The idea is to make everybody feel at home.


Most importantly, the merger has called upon everyone involved to examine their sense of identity and community. Some of that has been done through training.


"To get people to talk about things we don't talk about in this city, like race," said Jennie Biggs, who is white. She was leaning against a tree outside the Jenner campus, where her son, who had previously been at Ogden, was entering seventh grade. "To get you to think about how you fit in."



The merger of Jenner and Ogden didn't happen easily. It didn't happen by chance or by fiat or without hard feelings. There were people at both schools, most vocally at Ogden, who didn't want it. Some Ogden families left.


And there are some, perhaps more at Jenner, who feel that despite the great gains, something's been lost.


"I grew up in Cabrini and I feel a lot misplaced sometimes when I get over here," said Bell-Washington.


She looked around at the new condos and townhomes, some on the market for more than $1 million, and at the old Wayman AME church that sold to developers this summer. What little remains of the Cabrini she remembers will soon be gone.


And yet what matters to her more is what her kids are gaining, like a school library, music instruction, the chance to learn another language.


The first day of anything is just that. The first. More will come, and with more days more challenges. But this was a day to remember and one Chicago can learn from.


"It's emotional," said Wes Smedley, an Ogden parent who now has a daughter at Jenner. "I feel as proud as ever, and proud to be part of the Jenner community."


He was standing with a friend he made during the long merger negotiations, Ashley Linzy, a Jenner parent whose third-grader entered Ogden on Tuesday.


Smedley's white. Linzy's black.


"The best thing is getting to know my neighbors," he said, "to know and be known. I feel so lucky."


Linzy nodded and recited one of her favorite lines:


"Positive thoughts, no fear."

Previously:


08/29/18: Another summer. Again, a gift
08/17/18: In search of family in a small-town graveyard
08/09/18: Courage, kindness two years after 12-year-old blackboy was shot in Chicago
07/26/18: An everyday encounter made brighter by a good question: 'Do you have a story for me?'
06/19/18: A Big Sister's Guide to Life: Don't chase men and other practical advice
06/12/18: For 13 years, 2 friends wrote letters daily. It was a love affair of poetry, separated only by death.
06/01/18: What would we do without our brothers?
05/17/18: Forget a fiddler. City woman awakens to find a goose on her roof --- and laws about removing it and her eggs
05/10/18: A high school senior with college dreams was paralyzed by gunfire. Two years later, he's still pushing forward
04/05/18: Remembering the youngest history makers
04/03/18: The Parable of the (Expletive Deleted) Comfort Dog
02/15/18: Fees, fines, loans, scams: How the poor get poorer
02/01/18: When Paul Simon, Daniel Day-Lewis and Elton John say 'farewell' to work they love, should we too?
01/25/18: At Oscars time, let's snub the snubbing
12/28/17: The real 2017 word of the year
12/20/17: The laundry-folding robots are coming
12/13/17: How not to waste the last days of 2017

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