Jacques Conway was an Oak Park cop. Now he is a school board member at Oak Park and River Forest High School. He works at Park National Bank. And he is also the pastor of a Methodist church in Maywood.
But what really has his attention these days is a plan to open a charter school serving at-risk students in Maywood and Melrose Park.
Conway heads a group that includes retired teachers, principals and parents in neighboring, predominantly black Maywood. A resident of River Forest and a Dist. 200 school board member since 2005, Conway and his design team want to open a grammar school, starting with first though third graders, and then adding a grade each year.
The charter school idea was inspired by Oak Park and River Forest High School alum, Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter schools. Conway met Feinberg at OPRF’s 2005 Tradition of Excellence Awards, where Feinberg was an honoree. Conway thought the KIPP schools were exceptional and liked its concept-extended school days during the school year, mandatory summer classes, high expectations for students, and dedicated teachers.
“After I heard that, I thought, this is great. You don’t need a PhD to figure it out. If you keep a kid in school longer and instill in them a desire to achieve, they will achieve,” said Conway.
Maywood’s population is 82 percent black, and also has a growing Latino community currently at 10 percent, he said. The village has six public elementary schools, none of which are charter schools. Conway said his group wants to give students in that community a choice of a smaller, public school.
“A charter school is the best option because it’s a school of choice, and it’s a public school,” he said, adding that the school eventually plans to target high school dropouts, creating a program offering them dual enrollment at the charter school-where they’ll earn a diploma-and at Triton College earning credits toward an associate’s degree. Conway said the group will hire a management team to run the school.
Conway said his group has a space in mind, but funding has become an issue due to the economy.
After first considering a location in Maywood, his group turned to the shuttered H. McNelty School in Melrose Park. First Baptist Church in Melrose Park opened the K-12, private school in the early 2000s but was forced to close in June 2008 because of low enrollment. About 200 students were enrolled at that time. Located at 2100 Main St., Conway believes it’s an ideal place for his charter school, which will serve students from School District 89, which includes Maywood and Melrose Park. But Conway’s group doesn’t have the $5 million he says is needed to buy the property, which covers 90,000 square feet. They’re currently exploring ways to lease the building, but with an option to purchase it later.
The group first needs a location for their students before the state grants them their charter status, said Conway. The charter school would be called Imagine, reflecting the need for students to see themselves beyond where they are now, said Conway.
Currently, Conway’s church, Neighborhood United Methodist, has an after-school tutoring program. Launched in 2003, volunteers tutor about 20 students in grades 3-8 during the school year. After listening to Feinberg, Conway thought of serving more students by opening a charter school. He reached out to KIPP, which has more than 60 schools nationwide, including KIPP Ascend on the city’s West Side, about expanding to Maywood. KIPP though has changed its focus to adding high schools to its network of mostly elementary charter schools.
Conway then decided to move forward with opening the school independently. “It was just an easy thing to say, ‘Hey, let’s open a charter school. We can reach more kids,'” he said.
Another motivation for Conway, he noted, is the dire condition many at-risk minority children are in-living in communities with under-funded schools, crime-ridden neighborhoods and absentee parents. Educators relate such conditions to the “school-to-prison pipeline,” where at-risk minority students are likely to end up in the U.S. prison system versus college.
According to a 2008 study by the Pew Center, one in every 100 adults is currently in a U.S. prison or jail. For some groups the numbers are more troubling. Among black men 20 to 34 years of age, one in nine are incarcerated versus one in 30 for white men. And according to the report, between 1987 and 2007, the amount of money states spent on corrections more than doubled while spending in higher education remained moderate.
Conway noted other statistics showing that in Illinois and other states, taxpayers are spending more to put someone behind bars than sending them to college. A father of three and native of Chicago’s South Side, Conway said he wants to change those trends. He also wants to offer other children the same opportunities his kids had growing up in Oak Park and River Forest.
“We’re in a dire need to do something different,” he said.