Walking into Hefferan Elementary School on the West Side, it’s easy to forget the stark streets just outside-the abandoned, burned-out buildings, the graffiti, the cars left to rust, the restless people on the street corners.
Step inside and see a school that bears the marks of a sort of mini-urban renewal: freshly painted halls, new desks, a fully equipped computer lab, and a recently built science lab where students take a hands-on approach to a subject that just a few years ago never left the textbooks.
Peer inside some classrooms and you’ll hear roomfuls of children singing a song about the life of Mozart or speaking Japanese.
And inside the classroom and out, you’re likely to find parents participating-helping in classrooms, the lunchroom or on field trips. Tuesday, in fact, the school officially opened a Parents’ Center, a homeroom for parents.
What’s happened at Hefferan Elementary?
The school’s administration, local school council members and parents say the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 has “allowed us to make decisions based on what is best for the children,” said Darthula Young, co-chairwoman of the local school council that serves Hefferan, 4409 W. Wilcox St.
Mayor Richard Daley called Hefferan a school that has taken full advantage of what the Reform Act allows it to do.
“I think they just did it themselves,” said Daley, talking outside the school Tuesday. As a prelude to this week’s roundtable conference on education, Daley spent an hour visiting classrooms and listening to parents and administrators boast of Hefferan’s projects.
“They avoid the Board of Education. They don’t even listen to them. They go ahead and decide something and (do) it,” Daley said. “They just do it.”
What Hefferan has done, parents and school officials said, is to figure out a game plan for itself and make it work, starting with bringing in a reform-minded principal, Pat Harvey. Harvey said she noticed, for instance, that 80 to 90 percent of Hefferan’s 670 students come from single-mother households.
Harvey said that hurts the students, most of whom are black.
“Black men have almost been removed from their lives,” Harvey said.
The school put together a group of about 50 men who regularly come in and read to the students. The aim, Harvey said, is to counter the negative impression children tend to have of African-American men in the community.
“When they see this huge group in shirts, ties and suits,” she said, “it makes a difference.”
The key to improving public schools, Harvey said, is simple: “We’re a group of people who are all doers.”
