CHICAGO BOYS BREAKING BARRIERS

In light of all the bad news of late regarding teen violence and deaths among Chicago’s Public School system, here is a story that will surely warm your heart.

Last week, Chicago’s only public all-male, all-African-American high school, the Englewood Urban Prep Academy for Young Men, fulfilled its mission: 100 percent of its first senior class had been accepted to four-year colleges.

Urban Prep, a charter school that enrolls all comers in one of Chicago’s most beleaguered neighborhoods, has faced many difficult odds.  According to Tim King, the school’s founder and CEO, only 4 percent of this year’s senior class read at grade level as freshmen.  “There were those who told me that you can’t defy the data,” King said. “Black boys are killed. Black boys drop out of high school. Black boys go to jail. Black boys don’t go to college. Black boys don’t graduate from college.  They were wrong”!

Every day, before attending advanced placement biology classes and lectures on changing the world, students must first pass through their often dangerous neighborhoods, then metal detectors.  “Poverty, gangs, drugs, crime, low graduation rates, teen pregnancy — you name it, Englewood has it,” said Kenneth Hutchinson, the school’s director of college counseling who was born and raised in Englewood.  But at this school, somehow things are different. Students are assigned college counselors from day one. To prepare students for the next level, the school offers a longer than typical day — about 170,000 minutes longer, over four years, than other city schools — and more than double the usual number of English credits. The rigorous academic environment and strict uniform policy of black blazers, red ties and khakis isn’t for everyone. The first senior class began with 150 students. Of those who left, many moved out of the area and some moved into neighborhoods that were too dangerous to cross to get to the school. Fewer than 10 were expelled or dropped out.  But at last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Normally, it takes 18-year-old Jerry Hinds two buses and 45 minutes to get home from school. But on the day the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was to post his admission decision online at 5 p.m., he asked a friend to drive him home for the results.  He went into his bedroom, told his well-wishing mother this was something he had to do alone, closed the door and logged in. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” he remembers screaming. His mother burst in and began crying. That night he made more than 30 phone calls, at times shouting “I got in” on his cell phone and home phone at the same time. “We’re breaking barriers,” he said. “And that feels great.”