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News > In the Headlines
Chicago Public Schools is offering $10 million over two years to fund mentorship programs for 3,000 of the district's most at-risk students, the latest component of an anti-violence plan meant to stem shootings among city high schoolers. The district is seeking proposals from organizations to work in 12 neighborhoods across the city, and will disburse funds based on a variety of factors including a group's expertise, capacity and ability to track data like attendance, grades and in-school behavior. The neighborhoods are Brighton Park, Calumet Heights, East Garfield Park, Englewood, Near West Side, Roseland, South Lawndale, South Shore, Washington Heights, West Englewood, West Town and Woodlawn. The announcement is the latest component of schools chief Ron Huberman's plan to reduce the number of students murdered in the city, a task he was tapped by Mayor Richard Daley to do more than one year ago. The new funds are separate from the $10 million set aside for two years to hire a Pennsylvania-based non-profit to work with 250 troubled students. They were identified through a statistical model as having a greater than 20 percent chance of being shot in the next two years. The new round of funding comes on the heels of heavy protest from local community and religious groups upset that an outside organization was set to receive such a large sum of money from the school district. A panel of experts has been appointed to review the proposals, including former Chicago police superintendant Terry Hilliard, well-known psychiatrist Carl Bell and City Clerk Miguel del Valle. Bell, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and an expert on issues of youth violence, said Huberman convinced him that the panel is a genuine effort to select the best organizations, and not a political maneuver to assuage local discontent. "What he told me was that this work is not their core business, and so they're actually in a bad position to make judgments about who's good and who's not," said Bell. "And he's correct. You don't go to a plumber to get heart surgery." |
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