Abstract
The collective power of community members has the potential to shape education reform efforts through activism and community organizing. In this article, we present two cases where community organizers exhibited key leadership strategies designed to influence district decision-making about school closures in Chicago. Employing a mix of interviews, observations, and document analysis, we discuss how community organizing can be used as a framework in which to advocate for racial equity in education. By highlighting the leadership tactics parents and community organizers used to confront the racial injustice of neoliberal reforms, we argue for a broadening of traditional educational leadership paradigms.
Communities of color have always valued their local schools and have a noted history as successful bridge-builders who take the lead in cultivating school–community relationships (Velázquez, 2014; Warren & Mapp, 2011; Wilson & Johnson, 2015). Although parents of color have a track record of investing in their local schools, research has shown that district and school administrators often still condescend and/or disregard the cultural knowledge, power, and leadership they have to offer (Fuentes, 2012; Wilson & Johnson, 2015). In response, we use this article as an opportunity to challenge the stereotype that communities of color are uninformed about their children’s schooling by demonstrating how they are educational leaders in their own right (Auerbach, 2009; Baquedano-López, Alexander, & Hernández, 2013; Fuentes, 2012; Ishimaru, 2014). To accomplish this, we examine two separate cases of school closure in predominately working-class African American communities in the South Side of Chicago.
The massive closures of public schools in urban centers across the country are the latest school reform tactic disproportionately affecting communities of color. District officials and policymakers justify that school closure is the most reasonable solution to a host of issues such as declining student enrollments, repeated poor academic performance, budget limitations, and competition from other school choices, such as private schools, charters, magnet programs, and selective public schools (Diem & Welton, 2017; Kirshner & Gaertner, 2015; Siegel-Hawley, Bridges, & Shields, 2017). School closure is presented as the swiftest way to save failing urban public school systems, but opponents argue that this reform strategy is actually part of a larger scheme to gentrify low-income Black and Latinx neighborhoods and subsequently monopolize the market with neoliberal policies such as school privatization (Diem & Welton, 2017; A. W. Johnson, 2012; Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011; Lipman, 2011; Stovall, 2013).
To date, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has closed 150 schools, which is the most of any major urban city in the United States (Belanger, 2015; National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, 2013). The majority of schools closed in Chicago are located in predominately Black and low-income neighborhoods, and many of these closures have occurred on the South Side of the city (R. K. Johnson, 2014). In response, a network of community organizing groups and parents in Chicago continue to work locally and nationally to counter school closure and other attempts to disinvest and systematically remove resources from communities of color and their local schools. The ultimate goal of these Chicago-based organizers is to build community capacity to resolve a number of social, economic, and racial inequities their communities face, and, most importantly, to advocate for placing resources back into their schools. The sentiments of Chicago grassroots activists align with the work of education community organizers nationally—who generally mistrust competition, market forces, and other neoliberal means of improving schools, such as school closures, and instead emphasize mobilizing their fellow parents and community members to hold schools accountable for providing equitable educational opportunities for their children (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2012).
As such, we explore the leadership strategies parents and community organizers used to intervene and urge district administration and policymakers to consider more equitable and race-conscious alternatives to closing local schools. Traditionally, research in the educational leadership field focuses on the frameworks school administrators draw on to lead; however, there is an emerging body of scholarship emphasizing ways in which youth, parents, and community members should also be considered educational leaders who are equally important to school improvement and transformation (Ishimaru, 2013; Rodela, 2016; Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Wilson & Johnson, 2015). Also, when communities of color engage in grassroots community organizing to equalize their school communities, they will most likely encounter racial politics that are deeply entrenched within the organizations and systems they are trying to change (Diem & Welton, 2017; Fuentes, 2012; Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Stovall, 2013; Su, 2007). Hence, we consider how grassroots community organizing can be used as a framework in which to fight racial injustices within schools, highlighting the leadership tactics parents and community organizers in both cases used to expose the racial inequities of school closure, as well as the more racially equitable action plans they promoted as an alternative. We use the following research questions to guide our analysis:
The first case is drawn from a broader study investigating the role of parent engagement in Chicago’s 2012-2013 school closure process. The case of Sheldon Elementary in the Greenwood community 1 uses interview data and observations at community meetings and organizing events to highlight the potential benefits of considering the role of collaborative, community-based efforts in contesting school closures. For the second case, we use qualitative document analysis to recount how parent and community members of Dyett High School, in the Bronzeville neighborhood, staged a 34-day hunger strike to fight to keep their school open as well as draw greater attention to the racial inequities their school community faced. Dyett community organizers also re-envisioned a school-wide curricular focus they felt best aligned with the needs of their community. Finally, we discuss what the educational leadership field can learn from the principles of grassroots community organizing to assist in transforming educational systems into more racially equitable institutions.
Community Organizing as a Framework for Educational Leadership
School community organizing and activism typically involves youth, public school parents, and community members leveraging their collective power to disrupt and alter structures and policies that continue to underserve and deplete their schools and communities of resources and opportunities (Fabricant, 2011; Fuentes, 2009-2010, 2012; Ishimaru, 2013, 2014; Mediratta, Shah, & McAlister, 2008; Renée & McAlister, 2011; Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Stovall, 2013, 2016; Su, 2007). When low-income and communities of color have the power to mobilize on behalf of their schools and become leaders in school decision-making, school–community relationships, parent engagement, school–community trust, and teacher collegiality and morale are altogether strengthened (Auerbach, 2009; Fabricant, 2011; Ishimaru, 2013, 2014; Mediratta et al., 2008). This level of community engagement and leadership is also proven to be foundational to improving the school culture and climate, and student achievement (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2012; Ishimaru, 2013, 2014; Oakes & Rogers, 2006). As such, grassroots organizing efforts only further deepen participants’ commitment to addressing educational equity (Fuentes, 2012; Mediratta et al., 2008).
Within the last decade, scholarship on community organizing has expanded, where previously limited research formerly documented and provided a framework for the strategies low-income families and communities of color use to advocate for equitable educational opportunities in their neighborhood (Shirley, 2009). According to Shirley (2009), interest and resurgence in scholarship on community organizing coincided with President Obama’s first 2008 run for president, which ignited a grassroots movement of sorts by strategically implementing community organizing tactics in much of his presidential campaigning, skills the president learned previously as a young community organizer in the South Side of Chicago.
However, grassroots organizing for racial equity and justice in education is not a recent phenomenon, especially considering communities of color in the United States and globally have been engaged in this work for quite some time and have been experts on the needs of their community and children (Wilson & Johnson, 2015). For instance, the work of civil rights activists such as Ella Baker are considered foundational to contemporary community organizing (Oakes & Rogers, 2006). Moreover, young people have also been at the forefront of grassroots organizing and activism. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were multiple accounts of both Latinx and African American youth staging walkouts in protest of racial segregation, discrimination, and the failure to provide a culturally relevant curriculum (Ajunwa, 2011; Costanza-Chock, 2012).
Chicago, the context of our research, is also considered the bedrock of community organizing, as this is where Saul Alinsky, whose work is frequently referenced as foundational to community organizing, taught poor people how to use their collective power to address problems in their local communities during the 1950s and 1960s (Black, 2012; Oakes & Rogers, 2006). However, there are historical narratives of community organizers of color in Chicago that deserve to be more widely told. For example, the Young Lords Organization (YLO), a Puerto Rican community-based collective established in Chicago in the late 1960s, created its own newspaper to get important information out to their community and also helped build relationships and solidarity with other marginalized groups working toward racial justice (Velázquez, 2014). Hence, there has been a well-established network of neighborhood-based community organizing groups in Chicago that have led the charge for equitable education for working-class families of color and their children for well over 50 years (Black, 2012; Velázquez, 2014).
Over the last decade or so, the field of educational leadership has ventured further away from just managerial frameworks and theories for leadership, and, as a result, scholarship on equity and social-justice-oriented leadership has expanded exponentially within the field (Dantley & Tillman, 2006; Shields, 2010; Theoharis, 2007; Wiemelt, 2015). Community organizing falls under the same umbrella of equity and social justice leadership and is gradually gaining traction as a viable framework not just for community members. Indeed, scholars argue that school administrators can also use community organizing principles to build the relationships with parents and the community that are needed to make equity-oriented change happen schoolwide (Auerbach, 2009; Ishimaru, 2013, 2014)
Communities of Color as Experts, and Learning to Lead
School officials often presume low-income and communities of color will be a burden to school resources and academic achievement, and these assumptions can negatively affect school–community dynamics (Fuentes, 2012; Ishimaru, 2014; Scribner & Fernández, 2017). For instance, Ishimaru (2014) examined how deficit-oriented institutional scripts are norms and assumptions “that underlie educators’ interactions with each other and with other stakeholders” and negatively shape and constrain educators’ relationships with parents and community members of color (p. 12). As such, applying a community organizing framework to one’s leadership practice can help challenge any stereotypes and deficit images of communities of color formal school leaders may hold, and, instead, envision ways in which parents and community members can be positioned as integral to school decision-making.
Schools typically adopt a paternalistic dynamic with families and community members by governing what type of involvement fits within the school’s status quo, and, unfortunately, this rubric for quality family and community involvement is generally based on heteronormative, White, middle-class norms (Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Fuentes, 2012; Ishimaru, 2014). Soliciting family and community feedback and involvement via surveys, volunteering, chaperoning, school-sponsored parent workshops, or through the Parent–Teachers Association (PTA) are, indeed, important to building community knowledge of school structures and practices and increasing their participation in school, but these approaches position family and community members of color as passive participants and do little to challenge school–community power dynamics (Fernádez, LeChasseur, & Donaldson, 2017; Fuentes, 2012; Ishimaru, 2014; Warren, Hong, Rubin, & Uy, 2009; Warren & Mapp, 2011).
Instead of a hierarchical relationship between the school and the community, community organizing encourages a reciprocal relationship where the school is willing to learn from the community and vice versa (McAlister, Mintrop, Chong, & Renée, 2012). Furthermore, community organizing recognizes parents, students, and teachers as experts on how policy change affects them. Such knowledge and expertise makes them deserving of a voice and a leadership role in school decision-making (Oakes & Rogers, 2006; Warren & Mapp, 2011). Ultimately, school–community organizing centers on “working with—not just on behalf of”—minoritized communities “to increase power of residents to speak and act for themselves” (Renée & McAlister, 2011, p. 41). Scholars in community organizing attest that it is parents and community members of color who possess the lived experiences and on-the-ground, insider knowledge of their neighborhoods and cultural communities; therefore, we should view them as more than simply involved or participants in their children’s schooling, and consider how their expertise and decision-making is critical to student academic achievement (Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Fuentes, 2012; Hong, 2011).
Of course, like any form of school improvement, stakeholder training and strategizing is necessary for community organizing efforts to be successful in facilitating equity-based transformation. As such, there are a number of national and local community-based organizations (CBOs) established with the sole purpose of training and preparing community members to be school leaders who have a voice in educational policies and decisions that impact their school community (Oakes & Rogers, 2006; Warren & Mapp, 2011). Also, the capacity-building work of CBOs involves “patient, long-term,” strategic planning (Warren & Mapp, 2011, p. 6). While staged protests are one form of organizing, community organizers spend most of their time engaging in micropolitical forms of activism like developing strategic relationships, networking, and building coalitions with other educational stakeholders (Oakes & Rogers, 2006; Renée & McAlister, 2011). The encompassing training and professional development community organizers of color receive all go toward helping them develop a public voice that articulates their level of expertise on issues that matter most to them (Carlock, 2016).
Voice and Power
Unfortunately, schools as institutions are not entirely inclusive and readily welcoming of all community members, especially to those who are already minoritized by race, class, gender identity, sexuality, and immigrant status (Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Lott, 2001). So it is important to have mechanisms within local schools that question whose voice is and is not represented at the decision-making table (Shatkin & Gershberg, 2007), and community organizing is one platform in which to do so. One main objective of community organizing for education is to give those whose voice is commonly underrepresented and overlooked the strategies necessary to challenge the inequities their children and families face, especially inequities in school reform, policy, governance, and resource distribution (Fabricant, 2011; Lopez, 2003; Oakes & Rogers, 2006). Parent and community organizers should also consider what type of power they need to mobilize educational equity and opportunities for their children (Fuentes, 2009-2010). Those who historically have been the most marginalized by the educational system ultimately realize how coming together to build their power and strength in numbers as a public voice is their best attempt at getting the justice they deserve (Carlock, 2016; Fabricant, 2011).
Shared Leadership, Relationship Building, and Accountability
The principal, superintendent, and other administrator roles are archetypes typically associated with educational leadership; however, school community organizing envisions how community members, especially youth and families, should also be considered school leaders. Community organizing in education does not uphold the idea of leadership by a single person, but is a school improvement strategy that relies on the shared leadership and collective action of the community (Ishimaru, 2013, 2014; Renée & McAlister, 2011). According to Carlock (2016), community organizing serves as a conduit for “breaking down power relationships between parents, teachers, and school officials” where power is arranged laterally among participants, and not hierarchically (p. 118). Similarly, Ishimaru (2013) found that principals who shared leadership with low-income immigrant parents did so by building deep relationships with parents, developing parents’ capacity to lead by empowering them, and then ultimately giving parents the opportunity to lead.
School community organizing is also seen as a formidable tool in which to restore and/or improve school–community relationships as well as shift the hearts and minds of those who stand in opposition to achieving systemic equity (Rogers, 2006). Considering schools have a long history of ostracizing low-income and communities of color, community organizing can do the relationship building needed to repair these constrained school–community dynamics (Baquedano-López et al., 2013). The act of engaging in grassroots organizing can also bring school–community members closer together as they find solidarity among their shared struggles and injustices (Carlock, 2016).
Essentially, community organizing produces invaluable parent and community relationships, which is social capital that school administrators should learn to tap into and integrate into how they lead for equity (Ishimaru, 2013). Furthermore, one would hope that the shared leadership and relationships developed when engaging in community organizing would also lead to a deeper sense of trust between the school and community. However, Ishimaru (2014) found that districts implementing a community organizing framework did not develop a greater trust between teacher and parents, and this was largely due in part to teachers only supporting parent involvement that reinforced and conformed “to their expectations” and aligned “with their cultural and class norms and social capital” (p. 40).
Racial Justice and Politics
Community organizing can be a decolonizing act as communities of color work to ask the school community the tough questions needed because school officials and policymakers are often silent or complicit on issues of race (Baquedano-López et al., 2013). Furthermore, antiracist-oriented changes require educators to step away from the ease and comfort of operating under “business as usual” to shift their attitudes, norms, and practices to be more attuned to issues of race (Larson & Ovando, 2001; Oakes, Welner, Yonezawa, & Allen, 2005; Young & Laible, 2000). For this reason, parents and community members may be in an opportune position to shake up the racial status quo in their school community to ensure discussions about race and inequity, issues that often get ignored, are on the table (Fuentes, 2012).
There is an emergence of research that explores how communities of color use grassroots organizing to tackle inequities in education, but much of this research discusses equity and social justice in a broader sense, and does not explicitly address racism (Hong, 2011; Ishimaru, 2013, 2014; Oakes & Rogers, 2006; Renée & McAlister, 2011; Warren & Mapp, 2011). When communities of color confront and challenge the existing inequitable power structures of schooling, racial politics are inevitable (Diem & Welton, 2017; Fuentes, 2012; Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Stovall, 2013, 2016; Su, 2007). Community organizers of color are disrupting White, middle-class norms and spaces; thus, the presence of their Black and Brown bodies can literally be perceived as a threat. For example, Fuentes (2012) found that when White parents advocated for their children, school officials readily valued their feedback and considered their form of parent involvement to be acceptable. Whereas, when African American parents engaged in the same type of advocacy on behalf of their children, school officials typecast them as “angry and hostile parents who went beyond the acceptable boundaries of parent participation” (Fuentes, 2012, p. 645). Su (2007) similarly captured the tension among community organizers of color who felt the need to downplay racism to quickly get their equity concerns addressed, and placated to a wider audience by emphasizing class issues instead. This research suggests that when communities of color dare to challenge inequitable power dynamics and structures in education, community organizing is quite contentious.
There are a few scholars documenting the work of communities of color who are bravely diving into the racial politics that come with addressing racism in education (Fuentes, 2012; Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Stovall, 2013, 2016; Su, 2007). Still, much more research is needed to understand the racial politics of community organizing for educational reform. Only through research can we develop evidence-based strategies to prepare school administrators to be antiracist in their leadership, skills that are needed to better support communities’ of color efforts to facilitate systemic change for racial equity.
Methods
This article highlights two separate cases that demonstrate the potential of community organizing in communities of color to challenge systemic inequities in education. While we employ different research designs and data collection strategies, the two cases are meant to illustrate how leadership strategies that draw on community organizing principles represent a form of educational leadership.
Case 1: Sheldon Elementary in the Greenwood Community
The first case study is based on Sheldon Elementary in a South Side neighborhood of Chicago called Greenwood. Sheldon was one of four schools within that community that was directly affected by the 2012-2013 school closures. This case study is part of a larger study that explored the experiences of Black parents in Chicago’s school closure process. The broader study used participant observation, critical document analysis, and semistructured interviews with five focal parents from three schools in the Greenwood neighborhood. For the present study, we use a mix of field notes and interviews with two focal parents from Sheldon to examine the experiences of parents and community members who struggled to influence the decision to keep their school open.
During the 2012-2013 school year, community and district-sponsored meetings related to Sheldon Elementary and other South Side schools were observed. Specifically, community members were observed at three grassroots community meetings and demonstrations sponsored by a coalition of CBOs. Observations from community members are also from one of the Chicago Commission on School Utilization (CCSU) community meetings, as well as the official CPS school closure hearing for Sheldon Elementary. Finally, community members were observed at Sheldon’s Local School Council meeting the day after CPS officially voted to close the school. After each event, field notes were written and manually coded as data. This reanalysis of data from the larger study focused on marshaling evidence to support core tenets of community organizing for educational justice. We developed a list of a priori codes based on the synthesis of the extant literature about key community organizing principles and the two research questions.
In addition to observing the broader community at various meetings, this case analyzes the narratives of the two focal parents interviewed. The parents were purposefully chosen after identification at an initial community meeting for a cluster of South Side schools slated for closure. With the exception of one of the two grassroots organizing events discussed above, both parents spoke publicly at the meetings. One of the parent leaders (Mr. Hampton) was a member of the Local School Council at Sheldon. While the two key informants were observed in five community settings, they were formally interviewed in Spring 2014, one semester after the newly consolidated schools were opened. At the time of the study, Ms. Marshall was an African American single mother of two daughters attending Sheldon, and Mr. Hampton was an African American grandfather of two Sheldon students. Ms. Marshall’s interview was conducted in her home and lasted 76 min, while Mr. Hampton’s interview was conducted in a local coffee shop and lasted 73 min. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the a priori codes used for analyzing the observations were applied in analysis of interview data. Also, while retrospective in nature, the goal of the interviews was to gather an understanding of their experiences as parents connecting with community organizers in the struggle to resist the school closures.
While analyzing retrospective interview data from two parents represents a limitation of this case, we argue that the parent narratives are illustrative of community stakeholders embracing a community organizing ethos. To supplement the stories of the parent experiences, the case draws from the observations of these parents and other key stakeholders. This triangulation of evidence allows us to share findings on the role of community organizing in influencing and developing the voices of parent leaders during Chicago’s school closure process. The CBOs that coalesced to support Sheldon Elementary gave the school and its parent organizers the much-needed boost to fuel their ongoing participation during the more than 8-month effort to challenge the district’s decisions on closures.
Case 2: Dyett High School
The second case study tells the story of how African American community members in Bronzeville, a South Side Chicago neighborhood, engaged in a month-long hunger strike to keep their neighborhood high school, Dyett, open despite the district’s threat of closure. The Dyett High hunger strike was a relatively high-profile case receiving local and national media attention. Therefore, data were readily available to do a qualitative document analysis of national and local magazine and newspaper outlets, blogs, and videos of key interviews and events.
Qualitative document analysis is a systematic process for reviewing or evaluating documents that can be either printed or electronic (Bowen, 2009). These existing documents provided a rich, historical narrative of the social and political context in which the Dyett High School community organizers had to navigate and the type of leadership they had to exude to keep their school open. We analyzed five national newspapers and magazines, nine local Chicago newspapers and/or magazines, one blog, and four videos of rallies/press conferences that were led by Dyett community organizers. All documents and videos were found through online sources. Using a variety of documents and videos from both national and local media outlets helped further converge and corroborate storylines and themes that emerged (Bowen, 2009). We initially conducted a content analysis by thoroughly reviewing newspapers, magazines articles, blogs, and videos to make sense of and draw preliminary inferences from the data. We then more thoroughly analyzed these documents and videos through a thematic analysis making meaning of key excerpts, entire passages, and quotations that helped identify patterns across the data and develop themes (see Bowen, 2009). This iterative process helped formulate the story of how the school closure policy unfolded and the type of self-sacrificial leadership the community organizers employed in response to the racial politics they encountered.
Context and Timeline of Events
Together, both cases provide important examples that advance the argument that community organizing is a form of educational leadership. Although distinct methods were used for each case, their similar contexts allow for a broader discussion of how influential community organizing for education reform is in the South Side of Chicago, as well as a critical examination of the ways in which communities of color and other minoritized persons fight against racial injustice. To better understand the context of community organizing for educational reform in Chicago, we provide a comprehensive timeline (Table 1) to demonstrate how the succession of districtwide school closure policies affected both of our case study schools.
Timeline of Key Events Related to Sheldon Elementary and Dyett High School.
Note. CPS = Chicago public schools.
Collective Engagement: The Case of Sheldon Elementary in Greenwood Community
As described above, the predominantly low-income African American Greenwood community had four schools that were directly affected by Chicago’s school closures in the 2012-2013 school year. This case study allows us to examine the actions of parents, teachers, and community members from one school in that neighborhood. These community members were actively engaged in grassroots organizing to influence the Chicago Board of Education’s school closure decisions.
The Sheldon school community was generally saddened by the school’s eventual closure at the end of the school year, yet there were parents who engaged in grassroots-level organizing alongside community allies to affect the district’s decision. The two parent informants from Sheldon who emerged as parent leaders in the school closure resistance effort were Mr. Hampton, a grandfather who was a member of Sheldon’s Local School Council, and Ms. Marshall, a mother of two Sheldon students. Unlike Mr. Hampton, Ms. Marshall was not a formal leader in the sense of holding a leadership position, but she was well known throughout the Sheldon school community and felt moved to get involved when her daughters’ school was originally named as a potential closure. There were also members of the Chicago’s Teachers Union as well as two neighborhood CBOs that connected with two other organizations outside the Greenwood Community, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) and Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS). These collaborations between the parents, teachers, and CBOs were part of a larger, citywide mobilization effort. In this case study, we discuss how these nontraditional educational leaders engaged in (a) relationship building, (b) public discourse, and (c) direct action. We argue that these strategies represent some key leadership practices utilized by community organizers when mobilizing to influence a decision.
Relationship Building Through Collective Engagement
Parents, teachers, and other community members were observed building relationships and forming coalitions during the school closure process. Parents from Sheldon were immediately embraced by two neighborhood-based organizations known for having powerful grassroots ties. In addition to collaborating with these local neighborhood groups, they worked closely with CTU, CSOSOS, KOCO, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) labor union. Through the work of the neighborhood-based community organization, KOCO, and the labor union, parents and teachers from Sheldon were connected to a broader network of community organizers and critics of the district’s school reform policies and Chicago’s racial politics. This type of coalition building was not new to residents of the South Side and represents an example of the development of what Orr (1999) calls Black social capital. Through these connections, Mr. Hampton and Ms. Marshall were able to enhance their social capital by organizing with others outside of their community.
Mr. Hampton was quite clear that building relationships with others was important for elevating their message and ensuring they were taken seriously. Mr. Hampton, along with teachers, students, and community members, participated in 1 day of a 3-day rally and march for educational justice sponsored by the CTU, SEIU, and Parents, Educators, and Clergy for Education (PEACE; Fieldnote, May 19, 2013). Several community members marched from their respective schools to a meeting point at Parkman Elementary. Mr. Hampton recalled his experiences of marching to Parkman Elementary that day by stating,
When we took that march, when we marched over to Parkman. Look at all of those schools that were there. It wasn’t just marching for that particular school; we marched for all these schools. Because, yeah, we all realized that if we don’t do this as a group, it’s not gonna work.
It was through demonstrations and connections with South Side CBOs that parents and teachers were able to broaden their social networks. They were part of a web of protesters that stretched beyond their local school communities and connected schools across neighborhood boundaries. The various speeches at rallies recorded show participants had an important connection to the power of collective engagement (Fieldnote, May 19, 2013). There was a strong sense that collective action beyond the narrow interests of one child in one school was necessary to combat isolation and to elevate key issues through the voices of all potentially affected by the decision.
Ms. Marshall also commented on how essential group support was in this school closure process. She especially commented on this in the context of Sheldon Elementary, which initially did not have a lot of support from teachers, parents, or community members.
You know, it was sad how there wasn’t a lot of people [from the community] involved when we had rallies and stuff. But one of the wonderful things that came out of it was I met a lot of wonderful people.
Both Ms. Marshall and Mr. Hampton spoke about the importance of collective engagement in organizing. Community organizers who orchestrated the protests may have also recognized the power of community mobilization of everyday residents as well. Encouraging participation from parents like Ms. Marshall and Mr. Hampton may be indicative of a belief by community organizers that local knowledge should be respected and that community members may also be considered experts. This element of leadership may be important to consider in the context of educational leadership for equity-oriented reforms, especially for historically marginalized communities of color.
Engaging in Public Discourse: Voice and Power
A crucial element of community organizing as a form of educational leadership demonstrated by parents, teachers, and community members was their engagement in the public sphere. As an example, Ms. Marshall and Mr. Hampton were moved to speak out in all but one of the public meetings and organizing events that we observed. When the CPS announced the schools slated for closure, both Ms. Marshall and Mr. Hampton were present at the local community meetings that were led by the district-appointed Commission on School Utilization. Indeed, the commission’s interim report expressed how essential community voice was to their information-gathering process (Commission on School Utilization, 2013).
At these meetings, Ms. Marshall, who is a very shy and soft-spoken person, stood up during the public comments section and expressed her concerns about Sheldon being placed on the list for closure. She also spoke out at a local demonstration, and never envisioned herself doing anything like this before.
I never thought of myself as a . . . I would say a little rebel. (chuckle) Never in a million years have I taken a stand like that and went to rallies and spoke up for something that I believed in.
Ms. Marshall’s engagement in this process politicized her, and she became more involved in school reform efforts. Through her vocal participation at local community meetings and grassroots demonstrations, she exhibited leadership skills through an engagement in public discourse. Without the organization and coalition building brought about by the CBOs, Ms. Marshall might not have engaged in the type of work that represents a key component of her leadership development.
Taking Action for Racial Justice
The final type of leadership strategies observed from parents, teachers, and community members in the Greenwood community can be found in their willingness to engage in direct action during the movement to resist school closures. A critical element of community organizing, especially in low-income communities, is the need to mobilize large groups of people for social change (Mediratta, Shah, & McAlister, 2009). The larger citywide protests were often characterized as fights for racial justice. For example, a lawsuit that claimed school closures would disproportionately affect Black students and students with learning disabilities was attempted by CTU (McCune, 2013). Community members affiliated with Sheldon Elementary and other schools affected by the school closures in the Greenwood neighborhood participated in a community vigil along Forest Drive, a major thoroughfare in the neighborhood, which emphasized the racialized aspects of the closures. As referenced earlier, they also marched over two miles from Sheldon to Parkman Elementary to meet up with other parents and community members demonstrating on behalf of their respective schools. In addition, they engaged in a press conference and demonstration at an elite private school in Chicago to point out the racial disparities in educational opportunities communities of color have to endure. The actions of these parents and other community members represent a key component of taking action for racial and educational justice. Many of them learned to lead in this way drawing from the power of CBOs’ mobilization efforts that advanced an explicit racial justice frame.
As an example of learning to lead, Mr. Hampton marched alongside teachers and community residents and participated in the demonstration on Forest Drive and discussed how important it was to engage in this way. He stated,
Yeah it was important. That’s why I went out there to march with all the people. When they said we’re gonna have a march, or we’re gonna to stand on Forest Drive and have those vigils or whatever, we needed to be heard. A lot of people—all they knew was, it was schools that were being closed. But why were you closing our school? Fifty-one schools at one time? Now, never in the history—you closed 51 schools? How many people did you displace? How many teachers lost their jobs? I wasn’t marching or getting involved for me, I was getting involved for the people in general.
It was through these varied acts that parents, teachers, and community residents were able to engage in direct actions that were organized outside of the district-sanctioned spaces. In this way, they fostered additional relationships, elevated their voices, and participated in grassroots-oriented leadership in an effort to persuade the district to reconsider the school closings. There was an important role for community organizers to play in helping to frame the closings as another example of racialized politics in communities of color.
Self-Sacrifice for Racial Justice: The Case of Dyett High and the 34-Day Hunger Strike
Dyett High School in the South Side Bronzeville neighborhood was initially announced as a phase-out school on November 30, 2011, to be subsequently closed in 2015. In response to this announcement, Dyett High community members in 2013 decided to form the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School (the Coalition) to work strategically over the next few years to keep the high school open. Then in 2015, when the school was soon scheduled to be closed permanently, as an act of leadership, 12 parents, teachers, and other community members on August 17 staged a 34-day hunger strike. During the entire 34 days, the hunger strikers maintained a liquid-only diet, protesting not just the pending closure of Dyett High, but the intensive privatization of public education and the overall neoliberal educational agenda imposed on the South Side of the city and other Black and Brown neighborhoods across Chicago (Fitzpatrick, 2016; Lipman, 2011; Masterson, 2016; Stovall, 2013).
Prior to its scheduled closing, Dyett High was the last open-enrollment public high school in the Bronzeville neighborhood. According to parent strikers, if Dyett High were to close, their children would have to travel 16 miles to attend another open-enrollment school (Peoplestribune, 2015). To make this long trek to school, their children would have to take a train as well as two buses, and this distance worried parents given the increase in violent crime across the city the previous summer (Dizard, 2015).
Subsequently, this case study provides an overview of the series of events that led community activists to initiate a hunger strike to prevent the closure of Dyett High School. Dyett community organizers felt their recommendations for what was best for their children’s education were not seriously considered by district leaders and policymakers, so they initiated a hunger strike, a form of self-sacrificial leadership, to raise public awareness about the racism they endured, and demand a voice in policy decisions that affect their school community. A leader who chooses to be self-sacrificing is willing to undergo personal risk or cost to serve the goals and mission of the group and/or organization (De Cremer, van Dijke, & Bos, 2004; Halverson, Holladay, Kazama, & Quiñones, 2004). Self-sacrificial leaders are also willing to think beyond personal self-interest for the greater good of others, and this often involves relinquishing personal privileges, rewards, and exercise of power (Halverson et al., 2004). Moreover, research suggests that self-sacrificial leadership is often precipitated by situational factors, like a crisis or when members are unsure of the organization’s survival (Halverson et al., 2004). Consequently, we examine why community activists felt a hunger strike, a form of self-sacrificing leadership, was the best course of action given the racial politics they faced.
Still Scheduled for Closure Despite Some Progress
The fight to keep an open-enrollment high school for the Bronzeville area began several years ago when CPS decided to turn the neighborhood’s only local high school at the time, King High, into a selective-enrollment school (Perdomo, 2015). Instead of being open enrollment, students must have a certain composite test score to be admitted to a selective-enrollment high school (Stovall, 2007). Dyett High was originally a middle school, but once King High became selective enrollment, Dyett was then converted to the only open-enrollment neighborhood high school in the area in 1999.
Even though Dyett was the only local high school option for the Bronzeville neighborhood, it still experienced a decline in enrollment. Community members attributed some of this decline to both the Mayor’s office and the Chicago Board of Education’s systemic disinvestment in Dyett High and all public schools across the South Side serving Black, working-class and low-income families. For instance, Jitu Brown, Dyett Local School Council member, KOCO education organizer, and one of the Coalition’s 12 hunger strikers, at an August 2, 2013 press conference on equalizing public school funding, revealed that CPS made a series of budget cuts between 2011 and 2013 that totaled to about US$1.3 million. This depletion of funds forced Dyett High to eliminate Art, Spanish, and Social Studies course offerings, and the only alternative for students was to take these courses online. In addition, programs vital to preparing students for college like AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) were also removed, along with a number of other mentoring programs (Furman, 2013). Members of the school community also predicted that the public announcement of Dyett’s imminent closure would negatively affect the school’s enrollment. According to Dyett’s 2014 valedictorian, students were worried that their high school would close before they were scheduled to even graduate, and, as a precaution, many of his classmates transferred to another school. As a result, only 40 out of 125 students who began with him as a freshman graduated alongside him (Eltagouri & Perez, 2016).
In 2012, CPS delivered a presentation on its school closing agenda with data revealing that two out of three students at Dyett High did not graduate, 15 out of 16 students did not meet state standards, and 25% of students within the boundary area chose not to attend their local high school (Masterson, 2016). Despite district data that suggested the high school was academically declining, parents and community members strongly believed that Dyett was actually making some academic progress prior to the district’s decision to close the school. In an interview, Jitu Brown commented that community members disliked the “underperforming” label assigned to the school, and, in the 2008-2009 school year, Dyett actually had the highest increase of students going to college out of all the high schools in the city as well as a decrease in arrests and suspensions (Masterson, 2016). That same year the school sponsored a nationally recognized restorative justice program where youth trained adults and other youth around the country in restorative justice practices (AFT, 2015). Dyett also won a prestigious US$4 million ESPN RISE UP grant to remodel the school’s athletic facility (AFT, 2015; Masterson, 2016). Dyett beat 425 schools around the country to receive this grant award (AFT, 2015).
Yet the high school’s academic potential was not taken into consideration, and Dyett’s low enrollment and resulting underutilization continued to be Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s rationale for closing the high school and all other schools throughout the city scheduled for closure. Also, the Mayor reminded hunger strikers that there were 10 other high school options for the Bronzeville community within a three-mile radius not yet at capacity. However, Coalition community activists continued to hold city and district policymakers accountable and did not accept the Mayor’s rationale. For instance, Coalition organizer J. Brian Malone at a public rally clarified that the other school options Mayor Emanuel presented are “outside the neighborhood and existing attendance boundaries, across gang lines, militarized, selective enrollment, and/or operated by a private contractor” and that they want their children to attend a neighborhood high school that “reflects their [community’s] vision” (Quinlan, 2015, par. 12). Regardless of district and political opinion, parents and community members believed Dyett was worth saving, and they were willing to make the sacrifices necessary to keep it open.
Sacrificing Personal Health as a Last Resort for Racial Justice
At first, the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett hunger strike gained limited attention, but in Week 2, the community organizers’ protest reached national news and social media outlets when they created the hashtag #FightForDyett (Sanchez, 2015), which was another platform in which to develop their public voice and message. At first, the activists used a number of community organizing strategies such as filing discrimination lawsuits, sleeping in tents on the high school grounds, picketing CPS headquarters and board of education meetings, as well as staging sit-ins at city hall, President Obama’s Chicago home, and at a town hall meeting with former CPS CEO and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. At a press conference in front of Dyett on Day 10 of the hunger strike, several federal, state, and local politicians spoke in support of the strikers as well as Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT; Chicago Teachers Union, 2015). Finally, community activists protested at two-city budget public hearings where at the second hearing, they were so effective in their interruptive questioning of city officials that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had to be quickly taken off stage and the hearing abruptly came to a close (Perdomo, 2015; Sanchez, 2015).
Dyett parents were, indeed, veteran community organizers who were well trained and informed about the racial implications and politics of education in Chicago and its impact on their children. Coalition members had already on two separate occasions organized to keep open another neighborhood school, Mollison Elementary, which CPS slated to be closed. As one parent, April Stogner, in her speech at a press conference, pointed out, she along with other Dyett hunger strikers were “not hungry for food, but for justice” and were experienced activists and leaders who were prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to keep their school open because they have
been to jail several times, we have tried to appeal to Rahm on so many occasions, this is our community, it’s been taken hostage, and it is time to let it go. It is ours and we are going to fight for it. I will say to the last dying breath we are in this, it is not a game. We are standing strong . . . and we are fighting for Dyett to remain in our community and we are going to do whatever is necessary to keep this school and have an open enrolled school in our community. (AFT, 2015)
The community organizers were willing to put their health at great risk for their children’s right to attend a quality school in their neighborhood, to the point of several strikers requiring hospitalization. Going weeks without solid food, strikers reported that they could tell their bodies were beginning to deteriorate, with one striker and member of KOCO collapsing inside CPS district headquarters after speaking before the school board (Perez, 2015). Another parent, Anna Jones, reported she lost 22 pounds during the course of the 34-day hunger strike (Ford, 2015).
Thus, according to hunger striker and KOCO community organizer Jitu Brown, the leadership that parents and community activists of color possess
debunks the really racist stereotype that black parents from working and low-income families do not care, will not fight for our children, because we will, we do and we did . . . It’s also a lesson for Chicago on how we truly have two Chicagos. In order to get a state-of-the art school where (CPS) invested millions of dollars . . . look at what lengths we had to go to. (Masterson, 2016, par. 16)
Likewise, as one Coalition to Revitalize Dyett parent Jeanette Taylor-Raman aptly put, a hunger strike is a necessary course of action that draws attention to the racism she encounters as a parent who lives “in a city where the only mistake of me and my children is being black” and also a “city where the mayor and alderman don’t respect working families, no matter which way you try to say it” (Kunichoff, 2015, par. 10).
Limited City and District Accountability Excludes Strikers From Decision-Making
For quite some time, since 2010, Dyett High community organizers worked on a plan to transform the school into a global leadership academy with a focus on green technology (Simon & Kelleher, 2012). Their plan also aimed to convert Dyett into a full-service community school that remained open past school hours to serve the surrounding community (Adams, 2016). The organizers received support from other powerful stakeholders who could help leverage their strategic plan such as local universities, the Chicago Teachers Union, and AFT, and also consulted with educational researchers to design the curriculum for this plan (Chicago Teachers Union, 2015; Simon & Kelleher, 2012). Organizers secured approximately 3,000 petition signatures, and the local residents mailed nearly 600 letters in support of the plan to Mayor Emanuel (Caine & Keenehan, 2015).
Community organizers thought the city and school district were in support of their plan to make Dyett both a green technology and community school. However, when CPS finally decided to not close but reopen Dyett, the district then in 2015 initiated a request for proposal (RFP) process and extended an opportunity for the general public to weigh in on what the future plan for the high school should be. Even though the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett felt the district reneged on negotiations that were in progress for their proposed plan, they still persevered and submitted their proposal through the formal RFP process (Sanchez, 2015). Two other proposals were also submitted, one by the former principal to operate the school with a sports theme, and the other proposal was to create an arts school that would be privately managed by an arts organization (Sanchez, 2015).
However, strikers felt that CPS did not fairly facilitate the RFP process. While two of the proposals were submitted on time, the strikers complained that one of the proposals was allowed to be submitted after the RFP deadline. Unfortunately, the Coalition further lost faith in being fully included in planning the future of Dyett, when, at the last minute, CPS canceled the final public hearing before the next scheduled Board of Education vote on the plan of action for the high school (Taylor-Ramann, 2015). Furthermore, several members of the Coalition believed the district’s creation of an RFP process open to the public was a lack of faith and belief “that ordinary/extraordinary folks could come up with a world-class educational plan for a school in our own neighborhood” (Taylor-Ramann, 2015, par. 12). The community organizers thought that the RFP process was the district’s way of communicating that they mistrusted the parents and community members of color to effectively lead on behalf of their own children.
On September 3, 2015, Day 18 of the hunger strike, CPS announced at a press conference that the district would reopen Dyett High School as an arts-focused, open-enrollment school, neighborhood school. CPS representatives claimed that this decision was a compromise among all proposals submitted, as well as input from students voicing they were more interested in the arts (Fitzpatrick, 2016; Sanchez, 2015). Yet strikers reported that they only found out about CPS’s decision for Dyett immediately before the press conference began, and were barred from even entering the conference (Ewing, 2015; Sanchez, 2015). The organizers were disappointed that the district did not listen to parent and community members’ request for a global leadership and green technology school, and thus decided to continue with the hunger strike for another 16 days. Even after both the city and CPS decided to keep Dyett open as a result of the community organizers’ efforts, especially the organizers’ self-sacrificial leadership, for many hunger strikers, it did not feel like a win. In the end, the hunger strikers believed that their voices were generally ignored, and they were left out of planning efforts to reopen their own neighborhood school. The city and district’s lack of accountability and inclusion of Dyett parent and community voice in decision-making ultimately created a sense of mistrust among all stakeholders involved.
Discussion and Recommendations
The relationships that were built among community organizers in both cases were grounded in their cause, as they were willing to forgo any institutional restrictions to achieve racial justice for children and families in their communities. As such, their collective power and capacity building was mobilized all for the purpose of keeping their schools open; other competing agendas did not stop them from pursuing racial justice. This collective willingness to engage in risky activism for racial justice was indeed powerful, giving Greenwood parents who were new to organizing the confidence to step out into leadership roles and further validating the leadership expertise of Dyett parents who had been engaging in educational organizing for quite some time.
Yet school administrators who are placed in formal leadership roles can find it difficult to share leadership with parents to enact equity-oriented change because they are “caught in the middle” of school district/central offices that still try to maintain a hierarchical dynamic, competing agendas, and politics. Administrators often do not want to have confrontational relationships with their district (Ishimaru, 2013, p. 33). Hence, school districts should take into consideration the tactics grassroots leaders use to work beyond institutional confines to accomplish their goals for racial justice. One way to do so would be for the district to eliminate political roadblocks and distractions that get in the way of prioritizing the change needed to achieve racial equity (see Ishimaru, 2013).
Research has shown that school administrators do, in fact, need the leadership of parents and community members to enact equity-oriented change (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2012; Mediratta et al., 2008). Still, educational institutions readily award decision-making processes that require formal, top–down leadership approaches, not necessarily the type of leadership that is bottom–up and shared with parents and the community (Ehrich & English, 2012). Furthermore, community organizers lack formal institutional authority and must work with others through coalition building and collective power to achieve their goals for change (Ehrich & English, 2012). Both Greenwood and Dyett community organizers built an expansive base of advocates of their cause to fight school closure by garnering the political backing of unions and long-standing civil rights organizations, and receiving leadership training and development from CBOs (see Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2012). Grassroots organizing taught parents how to build the necessary networks to invoke change (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2012; Oakes & Rogers, 2006; McAlliser Warren & Mapp, 2011). If parents as grassroots leaders possess such skill and potential for building strong coalitions, imagine the capacity building they could do for school and districts if offered the opportunity to be shared partners within these institutional settings.
One critique, though, is that parents and community organizers in both cases did not have support and backing from formal institutional leaders, such as city-level policymakers or district administrators, who ultimately have the power to make educational policy decisions. Research on educational change recommends that both top–down and bottom–up power is needed to make equity-oriented changes (Oakes et al., 2005). Challenging the racial status quo requires radical restructuring of the educational system, and parents and community will need the formal, positional power of district leaders and policymakers to make the official decisions needed to accomplish racial justice in education.
Even still, sharing power and working with parents and community members will not come easily for policymakers and school administrators who are accustomed to working in institutional structures that are bureaucratic in their approach to leadership, and that reinforce neoliberal policies that promote competition instead of sharing resources and collaboration (Ehrich & English, 2012; Ishimaru, 2013; Lipman, 2011). Just as Greenwood and Dyett community members were trained by CBOs about the importance of shared, grassroots leadership, school administrators who aim to adopt similar democratic approaches to leadership will need the same type of training and support. Ishimaru (2013) found in her study of principals who strategically worked toward sharing leadership with Latinx parents, that it was important for principals to be trained to see themselves as community organizers whose role is to empower parents to be “equal and valued members of the school community” (p. 22). Principals in this study received ongoing coaching and support to be stewards of shared leadership in their schools.
Furthermore, parent and community organizers in both cases used various forms of activist leadership that were lower in risk, such as acquiring signatures for petitions or writing reports and/or plans to equitably improve their schools (see Ehrich & English, 2012; Marshall & Anderson, 2008). Although, for the most part, parent and community organizers employed more extreme forms of activism, such as speaking out at public hearings, press conferences and rallies, as well as activism that was more of a personal risk and sacrifice like hunger strikes and demonstrations that resulted in their arrest. Educational community organizers in Chicago have been engaged in this “by any means necessary” form of activism for the sake of racial justice for quite some time. Stovall (2007, 2016) has written extensively about his involvement as a scholar and community leader with the Little Village and North Lawndale communities, who similarly staged a 3-week hunger strike to protest the desperate need for a new neighborhood school. It is unfortunate, though, that parents and community leaders of color still have to engage in activism that puts them personally at risk to capture the attention of political and school officials.
It is evident that parents and community leaders of color in our case studies had to take these drastic actions because political and educational leaders still do not view them as equal partners in educating their own children (see Scribner & Fernández, 2017; Shatkin & Gershberg, 2007; Wilson & Johnson, 2015). Furthermore, school reform policies, such as school closure, automatically create an unequal playing field between policymakers, school administrators, and the parents and students they are supposed to serve, as the threat of closure creates a culture of mistrust between these stakeholders. Providing district and school administrators with professional development that teaches them how to share leadership with parents and community members is, indeed, important, but perhaps it is still not enough to counter racism that is deeply rooted in structures, policies, and practices in urban school contexts such as Chicago.
Thus, we call on leadership preparation programs to prioritize grassroots community leadership in their training and curriculum (Ehrich & English, 2012). This augmentation of existing curriculum should go beyond basic coursework in school–community relations to include more robust and transformative opportunities for educators to develop the skills and dispositions necessary to collaborate effectively with community members (Khalifa, 2012). One suggestion would be to assign leadership preparation students participatory action research projects where they work alongside school–community organizers to identify key problems and possible solutions for achieving racial justice for their students and families. Through these types of curricular shifts in preparation programs, traditional educational leaders can learn to leverage the power of community organizing frames to advance reforms that explicitly focus on achieving racial justice within districts and schools. This may have the added benefit of increasing more authentic forms of community engagement while also empowering school leaders to advance stances that are aligned with the experiences of the local communities they serve. In truth, there may be times when these community organizing principles are at odds with formal system approaches to school improvement within districts and schools. Therefore, we acknowledge the level of complexity associated with being a formal leader within a system while simultaneously working toward racial justice-centered change within that same system (Ehrich & English, 2012). However, we argue that a focus on this additional dimension of leadership in school leadership preparation programs may also help formal educational leaders learn how to move beyond conflict toward more democratic ideals associated with deliberation and collaboration. This is essential because the democratic values of community organizing should be developed in leaders at their inception.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.