North Lawndale schools get a $41 million science and art makeover

Dressed in a white lab coat, Chicago high school senior Francheska Cancel carefully used clay to shape a triangular muscle and placed it on the shoulder of a plastic skeleton.

“I love science and now everything we do here is about science,” she said.

Francheska, who wants to study nursing in college, lucked out.

Collins Academy STEAM High School, where she goes, is one of three schools in the West Side North Lawndale neighborhood getting $41 million in investment to create state-of-the-art science and arts programming.

In a tour of the two elementary and one high schools on Tuesday, Chicago Public Schools officials watched preschoolers learning about trees, third graders using magnets to understand attraction and gravity and high schoolers not only working with skeletons, but also getting a hands-on physics lesson.

This is all the result of community members dreaming and making it happen. Betty Green, a former principal of a neighborhood elementary school and one of the main drivers of the project, said it took seven long years.

“We have worked with three mayors, three [CPS] CEOs and three sets of members of the board of education, and there have been many days when I wanted to give up,” she said at a press conference Tuesday at Collins Academy. “But I thought about what I used to say to my students, and that's that quitters never win, and winners never quit. So we are very excited today.”

Green said a community group took on this work and was determined to make sure students in North Lawndale, a high-poverty community that has suffered from disinvestment, get access to a high quality and rigorous education. Many of the area schools have seen enrollment and budgets dwindle over the past two decades.

At first, the group wanted several elementary schools consolidated into one brand new school, noting the neighborhood had no modern school constructed for decades. But there was a lot of pushback from the targeted schools.

Instead, they came up with the idea of infusing Johnson and Chalmers elementary schools and Collins high school with resources. In last year’s budget, CPS set aside $31 million to renovate facilities, train teachers in new science curriculums, buy equipment and pay for extra staff. Renovations are set to begin next summer and finish by the end of 2026.

The City Council last week approved another $10 million from special taxing districts called TIFs. At Tuesday’s event, Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th Ward, noted the value of TIFs in funding projects like this “that help develop and enhance the quality of life in a community.”

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez thanked the council members for the TIF money at Collins, but on Wednesday he is expected to testify at a city council hearing about his request for $426 million in TIF money to cover CPS operating expenses this year — not for specific projects. Ervin and other alderpersons have pushed back and said they doubt that is unrealistic, but Martinez insists enough TIF money exists.

At the event, Martinez said some might argue that the district should stop investing in schools like Chalmers, Johnson and Collins. They each have only about 200 students. But Martinez said he believes they will be able to draw more students once people understand they have high-quality programming and resources. Collins High School’s freshman class is larger, Martinez said, because students have heard about this programming.

“So that's what we're talking about,” he said. “That's what we mean about investing in our neighborhood schools. That is what's possible when we start doing this across the city in underenrolled schools.”

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.