Closing Irving School, random ruminations, with sub-titles

Imagine

Imagine you are in primary, going to a school that is part of a fragile, yet closely knit community. A school where the same group of employees and volunteers have come in for years and done whatever they could to make your experience better. A school where EVERY child inside lives in poverty and the only place they can find refuge is in the classroom.

Imagine one day that school closed and you were shifted to a new school; a middle school. A school where all of the people live in houses that are nicer than yours (you come from the projects) and as a result, they imagine they are better than you. The sad thing is, you imagine they are better than you... you are in their school.

Closing schools kill neighborhoods

It has been proven locally, there is an alternative to closing schools and forcibly herding children and families. Quest Charter Academy has proven that some old school buildings can be revived. The Board that oversees Quest has collaborated with the City and the County in a way that shows that closing schools doesn't have to happen - renovation may be possible:

Old Loucks School

Renovated Loucks School now Quest

Overcrowding=Warehousing

Remember this post about the overcrowding of Glen Oak School? To date, tax payers have not heard back from the District about the solution to the overcrowding, nor has anybody in any position of authority, publicly inquired about the welfare of the students being warehoused. Out of sight - out of mind.

One can't help but wonder whether the classrooms at Lincoln School will now be over crowded.

Population Shift

Notice on the map below, there are no public schools in the lower valley in between Valeska Hinton (special admission only) and Lincoln Middle School. Additionally, there are no public schools in the lower valley in between Lincoln Middle School and Washington Gifted School (special admission only).

Redistricting is complete; the School District has a new boundary map; the City is already actively working with the Housing Authority to relocate it's residents to Section 8 Housing in the East Bluff and surrounding areas. In a matter of years, the herding of families of the children that have been shifted to the schools in the lower North East valley (Lincoln) and the lower East Bluff (Glen Oak) will be complete. 

Developers are salivating, their dream of developing the river front, down the river front trail to the marina, is closer now than it has ever been. Taft and the surrounding areas are well within grasp. Full river front development is potentially on track to being realized, thanks to the cooperation of the School District.

Irving School to close Dec. 21.

The 114-year-old school is finally, actually closing at the end of 2012. Since August, students and staff have been preparing to move to a 20-year-old air-conditioned building with new cafeteria, library, kitchen and computer lab.

On Dec. 21, Irving students will take what amounts to a field trip to their new school. They'll load onto buses, carrying their books and supplies, then unpack them in their cubbies at Lincoln, which will become simply Lincoln School, rather than Lincoln Middle School.

From the beginning of Christmas break to the end, Lincoln will go from a middle school to a kindergarten-through-eighth grade building, approximately doubling to 820 students and 86 teachers and other staff.

The district changed Irving's starting times so students could get accustomed to riding a bus route with Lincoln students. Substitute teachers have been hired to assure each teacher three days to pack and move into a new classroom. When the students move to Lincoln, the caring volunteers will follow them.

Lincoln open house and ribbon-cutting for new addition: 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the school, 700 Mary St. The ribbon-cutting ceremony is 6 p.m., followed by a parents' forum with the Superintendent, tours and the open house. Source

The Urban League's Urban Youth Empowerment Program

The local Urban League is one of six affiliates in the country that has a grant to continue a pilot program designed to prepare young people in the 18 - 24 age group for the workforce.

The local Urban League’s success with its Urban Youth Empowerment Program is the reason the agency is able to continue the pilot project with a $200,000 grant funded through a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Urban League.

Of the 27 affiliates originally funded through the project, the local Urban League had the third-highest number of participants who found and retained jobs after going through the program.

About the Urban League
After a wave of black migrants fleeing oppression in the South for opportunity in the North in the early 1900s, a wealthy white widow, Ruth Standish Baldwin, and George Edmund Haynes, a social worker and the first black to receive a doctoral degree from Columbia University, took the lead in founding the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in 1910.

Based in New York, the committee soon merged with two other organizations. Haynes became the first director. The organization shortened its name to the National Urban League in 1920.

As the organization grew, independent affiliates spread throughout the country. The Tri-County affiliate, based in Peoria, was founded in 1965 by an interracial group of local citizens.

In 1964, Erma Davis, Valeska Hinton and Helen Leatherwood urged a group of local businessmen and community leaders to start an Urban League affiliate in Peoria. The group passed the hat, raising $27,000 in one night. Frank Campbell was hired as the first director a year later, and Talman Van Arsdale, then president of Bradley University, was the first president of the board of directors.

The national office sets the Urban League’s broad mission on issues of education, employment, housing, health and civil rights while some 100 affiliates are free to localize the mission to suit community needs. Unemployment remains a chief area of concern at the national and local level.

Source