Principal Barbara Williams prefers carrots to sticks. At graduation exercises Tuesday afternoon, she will pause to ask her 8th graders to hand their corsages and boutonnieres to their parents. The gesture is meant to honor the parents-and disarm the students.
Sharp objects, including corsage pins, count as contraband at Williams`
facility, the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center School. Tuesday`s ceremony, accompanied by all the pomp and circumstance allowable, honors many achievements. The 71 students are celebrating their promotion from grade school to high school and their ability to convert the failure of detention to the success of graduation.
The school is graduating, too, from its old image as a holding pen to its new role as a bona fide academic institution.
”Graduation is the high point, something the students didn`t expect,”
says local School Council President Paul Brady. ”Barbara Williams is unique in that she makes (the students) believe they can expect to succeed.”
Success hasn`t always been part of the curriculum at the school, which might as well be called Lockdown High. Its dim corridors have stretched across the second floor of the Juvenile Court Building at 1100 S. Hamilton Ave. since the building opened in 1973. (The school itself dates back to 1907.)
Downstairs, an endless tide of troubled kids washes through the dockets of the Circuit Court`s juvenile division. Upstairs, nearly 600 kids, ages 10 to 17, live at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, known as the Audy Home in its earlier days. Some await hearings, others are serving sentences of up to 30 days for punching a teacher or stealing a car. About 160 count as automatic transfers, 15- and 16-year-olds accused of crimes so severe that they are awaiting trial in adult courts.
They may slouch in the crayon-bright chairs of the community area and sleep behind the narrow glass doors of their locked cubicles for a night, a month, a year, or more. Each section is equipped with 16 or 18 cubicles, a group bathroom and a community room.
If a seat is available, they attend the school, which was built for about 350 students but now serves nearly 450, about 10 percent of whom are girls.
The school is operated by the Chicago public school system, is funded for the most part by the state, and is a tenant of the county Corrections Department.
”These are children who have committed criminal acts, not criminals,”
says Williams, who became principal almost two years ago. ”When they come out of the elevator, they`re my students; I have to provide a climate of opportunity.”
Williams` vision of a school focused on rehabilitation puts her at odds with the detention center`s emphasis on punishment and the school`s own history.
”Past principals seemed to think of these kids as losers and therefore treated them that way,” says Brady, who has observed the school for five years as a member of the Citizens` Committee on the Juvenile Court, a monitoring group. Williams ”has brought an enthusiasm to the school we`ve found to be contagious.”
A student explains the split between the two worlds. ”Upstairs it`s hell, downstairs it`s heaven.” Lockdown High wakes up much like any other school, though the students arrive by elevator, not school bus, accompanied by burly attendants, not crossing guards. The students walk the halls single file, dressed in plain khaki pants and white T-shirts stamped with block prints of owls and cardinals and other birds, a sorting system long since abandoned to overcrowding.
Williams, who has been a student, teacher, counselor and administrator in the Chicago public schools for close to 30 years, walks the halls, too, handing out positive attitude. She compliments the ”gentlemen” in their bird shirts, teachers in their classrooms, even the security attendants lounging outside each room. The school has a staff of 41 teachers and a maximum of 15 students per class in its 32 classrooms.
Making them learn
”Because Mrs. Williams is so giving, she has freed the teachers up to be more compassionate,” says Judith Adams, one of two social workers on the staff. ”The school has changed in the three years I`ve been here. It`s less punitive, more nurturing.” Classes are divided by age, maturity, severity of crime, and, most important to Williams, academic level.
Surprisingly, this hasn`t always been true.
Until about two years ago, all students were uniformly categorized as behaviorally disordered, partly, officials acknowledge, as an effort to gain funding and keep class size down. A suit filed by the public guardian`s office against another school that used the same practices led to requirements that schools now test students before labeling them.
Each student is evaluated in math and reading and placed in an appropriate class, from remedial to gifted. About 40 percent of the students need special education. Many can`t remember when they last attended school.
”At first, they used to stall with trying to teach us,” says Clayton, 16, who has been in and out of detention since age 9 and is now charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault. (The names of all students in this story have been changed.)
”Then they were teaching things we already learned in the street, not things to look forward to. Like times tables, we already knew that. We should have been doing algebra or something. Now it`s better. They`re trying to make us learn something.”
The things students are learning include trigonometry, social studies
(including map reading and black history), computer skills and world literature.
Setting goals
Helen Sullivan teaches the gifted section of 9th- and 10th-grade English. Her classroom, its walls lined with construction-paper cutouts and world maps, could easily pass for the conventional variety. All except for the black phone and blue panic button imbedded in the chalkboard above her desk, which can summon the security staff instantly.
Eight young men file into her classroom and take their places at a square of neon-yellow molded plastic desks. Sullivan plunges straight into a discussion of ”Rothchild`s Fiddle” by Anton Chekhov, alternating harsh reprimands with the kindest of endearments.
She lashes out at a student who appears to be gang-signing, a persistent problem in school. Then she coaxes another, ”Go ahead, honey.”
”Who`s the gentry?” she asks, referring to characters in the story who get special treatment.
”The security?” offers one student. The students follow the discussion, though none were present the day the class started the story. The constant interruption of court dates, conferences with lawyers and social workers, punishment in isolation-and releases-chew into class time.
Then again, cutting class isn`t an option here.
”On the street, I was paying no attention,” says Jim, who is serving time for battery. ”Here, I got nothing to do but pay attention. I`m getting better.” A few glassy-eyed students seem to fade out of class; others seen genuinely enthusiastic about the education forced on them.
”We have long-term and short-term goals,” Clayton says about his courses. ”My goal is to get out of here. My goal in class is, I want to go higher. I like to read and to spell. I like to think. One of my goals is to read more often. I like to stand up in front of class and read.”
After class, the students flip closed their ”Great Books” readers, line up and ”lock” their hands by digging them into their pockets. Sullivan offers one more bit of advice. ”Get rid of the tattoos. Judges don`t like them.”
The centerpiece
Williams has been shoring up the academic program on all sides, expanding the library, inviting in tutors, handing out real report cards, and importing computers. She bought two with an award from Whitman Corp. honoring her management skills.
The centerpiece of Williams` efforts is graduation, staged as a formal event for the first time last June. ”It was a big step for us,” says Assistant Principal Thomas O`Malley. ”Word got passed around that we were a legitimate school, that if you work hard it pays off.”
The school is not accredited by the North Central Association, the regional accrediting body for local schools. But Chicago public school officials say the credits earned are good at other schools. Of last year`s 52 graduates, 26 now attend regular high schools, 11 have moved on to more serious jails, 13 are back upstairs and 2 are missing from the city`s computerized system.
Volunteers help track the students in their home schools to discourage dropouts. Williams feels frustrated by the number back in her school; the detention center sees about 62 percent of its residents again. At least, she says, most of the students inside and out are enrolled in high school programs. She hopes building bridges to the parents will help keep kids on the straight and narrow. Parents are invited to school one Wednesday evening each month.
The parents arrive slowly, few bothering to shed their coats, fatigue or worry. Over punch and cookies, they are welcomed by Frances Carroll, whose job as transition facilitator is to make sure the kids who leave stay gone.
”This is one place were we do not say come back,” Carroll begins. ”We do not want them back.” For the parents, getting a look at the school eases some of their fears.
”It`s probably better than what I imagined-the teachers, the whole program, I wasn`t expecting,” says a woman whose son is charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault. ”I thought they locked them up and didn`t care about them.”
`Can you do it?`
Getting the kids to believe they can succeed isn`t easy.
Last month, Williams addressed the potential graduates in the school`s South Chapel, a windowless brick room with a makeshift altar and a miniature electric organ.
”I pledge to you, if you graduate here, I`ll try to make your next graduation from high school,” Williams began. ”I have a personal commitment to you.” The students scrutinized the brown bricks, unmoved. Williams explained the rules of the game. Students who pass the state exams at the 8th- grade level in math and history and the U.S. Constitution would be eligible to graduate.
They could invite two adults to what is delicately billed as a citywide graduation. The diplomas, from the Chicago public schools and four suburban districts, will be made out in the names of the students` home schools.
A few flattops and buzzcuts looked up. The graduates will wear blue and gold caps and gowns, over their own clothes, negotiations with the center permitting.
”I know it`s important,” Williams said. ”You don`t want to be walking around in your khakis and owls and chickens.” The room broke out in chuckles. That`s when Monique, 13, decided to get with the program.
”I was looking forward to marching at my own school,” she says. ”I thought I was going to walk across the stage. I wanted this big old dress. Like a prom dress. Blue and white with a big old bow and a long tail skirt that comes up in front.”
That dream dried up after she was charged with murder.
”When (Williams) said they`ll be taking pictures, and they are going to think about letting us wear our clothes, then I decided I wanted to graduate- if I pass my Constitution.”
By the time the discussion turned to flowers, the room hummed with anticipation. One student raised his hand. Could Williams ask permission for them to take the study books upstairs? He wanted to study after school. Williams closed the meeting like an insistent preacher, urging her
congregation, ”Can you do it? Can you do it? Can you do it?”
Finally, the brown brick rang with the voices of the near-graduates,
”Yeah!”
After the meeting, a few students crowded into Adams` tiny counseling office to talk.
Frank, 16, who is awaiting trial as an adult on murder charges, had watched last year`s ceremony.
”It was straight,” he says with a nod of approval, ”for a graduation in jail. I wouldn`t be able to do it. I just know. I wouldn`t want my mother to see me graduating out of here.”
Carlos, a pale 14-year-old who has been charged with murder, is optimistic.
”I didn`t think I was going to make it to high school. I thought I`d drop out or get kicked out or have too many problems in school. Now I think I`m going to make it to high school. I think I`m going to graduate from high school. It makes me feel good. `Cause my family is going to be proud of me. They`re going to say I`m changed.”
Most say it`s the boredom of life upstairs, not the stimulation downstairs, that might deter them from further crime. Still, they wish they`d received attention this intensive before their arrests.
”Out there, you are there doing crime,” says Clayton. ”You got to wait to come to jail to graduate.”
