By Ben Joravsky
There was only one problem. Parents at Hillard, a series of high-rises near 23rd and State, had been pressing the board for a new school for their children. “The Hillard parents had been promised a school by the board,” says Woodard, who has been working in local schools for over 30 years. “They deserved it, they needed it. Their children were in old, substandard mobile units.”
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The battle over who would use South Loop School–there wasn’t enough space in the building for all the Hillard Homes and Dearborn Park children–made national news. It wasn’t so much a racial issue, since many Dearborn Park residents are black, as a class one. “The challenge has always been to keep an economic mix of children in the same school,” says Woodard. In 1989 the central office attempted to forge a compromise by sending local kindergartners and first-graders to a recently built modular unit near the Hillard Homes and limiting the newly built South Loop School to second through eighth grade. It didn’t work; the parents of Dearborn Park made it clear that their children would not be bused to any school near Hillard.
If Woodard has a problem, it’s with a “small but vocal minority” of nearby residents “who have their own agenda,” she says. “Many of the residents are very supportive of the school. I think we want many of the same things. I would like to see more diversity in the classroom. I think children should be exposed to children from different backgrounds. You can’t raise your children in a vacuum. I wish more of the residents would send their children to our school. But I don’t think we should shut out the kids from Hillard. We could be the model to show that kids from different classes can work together.”
Woodard says she didn’t expect any opposition to hanging the sign. “Every school has one,” she says. “It would be no different than any of those, about eight feet off the ground, with our name–South Loop School–in blue and white and enough white space for special announcements, like when we’re having an LSC meeting or which student won which award. It’s a sign of pride for a school, a way to say we’re here.”
Hill notified Woodard by letter that she couldn’t install a sign without a city permit. “I thought I had the discretionary authority to install the sign, but I guess I didn’t,” she says. “I’m not going to get into a big public fight. I’m a positive person. I’m going to meet with Mr. Hill and make our case. All the other schools have a sign. Why can’t we?”
