A handful of 5th Ward residents fondly recalled their days at the old Foster School Thursday night, while voicing fears about census data that show the ward is no longer majority black.
The unusally lightly attended ward meeting at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Center featured presentations from Gilo Kwesi Logan of Citizens for a Better Evanston, a group backing the referendum to build a new school in the ward, and from Evanston’s community and economic development director, Steve Griffin, on the results of the 2010 census.
“I’m concerned that so many African-Americans are moving out of Evanston — more than any other race,” one resident said, after Griffin noted that the number of blacks in the ward has declined nearly 38 percent since 2000, while the ward’s total population has dropped just over 2 percent.
The black population city-wide has also declined, but not as sharply.
Griffin said the foreclosure crisis hit pretty hard citywide, but had an especially severe impact in the 5th Ward.
And Evanston “is a tough town to find affordable housing in,” Griffin added.
He said Skokie offers lower housing costs, and noted that the decrease in the black population in Evanston was almost exactly the same as the increase in the black population of Skokie in the new census.
Jerome Summers, a District 65 school board member and Foster School graduate, argued that a new 5th Ward school would revive the community. “Schools are the number one community building institution in America,” Summers claimed.
And he decried the practice of busing students from the ward to achieve racial balance in other schools.
But some residents said they didn’t like the school board’s plan to build the new school on Foster Field, because it would reduce the amount of space available for youth sports activities.
And while the school board projects that 88 percent of the students at the new school will be low income, resident Carlis Sutton said he fears gentrification in the ward.
“The only think that keeps us from being Kenilworth is that a few black people won’t leave,” Sutton claimed.
Essentially no market-rate housing has been built in the ward for the past half-century, except for a few dozen town homes at Church Street Village development. And property values have declined sharply with the recession. However Sutton sees a transformation afoot.
“Gentrification tells me this land is now too valuable for black people,” he said.
But at the same time, he criticized the city’s plan to build new subsidized housing across from Fleetwood on the former Bishop Freeman warehouse site.
Sutton, who owns rental apartment buildings, said “with all this vacant property in the ward, I have real serious problems with why we’re building more housing. That land could have been used as the site for a school.”
Meanwhile, Logan, a teacher who has taught in Evanston and Chicago schools, painted a picture of rampant classroom overcrowding if the referendum fails to pass.
He said the average class size in Evanston now is 21 or 22 students and would rise to 30 to 32 if the referendum is rejected.
Times change
Yes, the 5th Ward is experiencing significant changes, as are other parts of Evanston, Chicago and our country. Change can be unsettling and disruptive, but as a society we need to embrace change, and hopefully it's positive change. Just think about technology and the rapid changes in human interaction that has occurred over the last 10 years, and will continue into the future.
I was recently in NYC and amazed to see what's happened to Little Italy. For anyone who hasn't visited recently, Little Italy has become totally engulfed by Chinatown. Closer to home, i was recently driving down Milwaukee Avenue, in the traditional Polish area. Today there are several Hispanic stores and restaurants.
Who knows what the 5th Ward will look like in 5 or 10 years?
We do know that if we continue to spend more money and raise taxes, that there will be fewer and fewer lower and middle income people living in Evanston. Evanston is an expensive place to live today, and likely to become significantly more expensive in the future.
Central Core school is just part of the answer
Interesting article about the changing demographics of Evanston.
A new school is necessary to accommodate the growing number of children in our schools, and a school in the Central Core makes the most sense.
But, a new Central Core school is only one part of the answer to solve the problems facing Evanston education today. My children attend King Lab and I can't wait for my daughters to have access to STEM labs. Evanston has great schools – there is a reason we moved here three years ago – but this referendum will make sure that we move forward, giving ALL of our children the best education possible.