Uplift High School has only about 100 students. Can the community and CPS save it from being a ‘failed experiment’?

Uplift Community High School is described as a “pillar” of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood by parents and former students. Sophomore Shyan Donley says the school has opened doors for her through field trips, social justice organizations and “experiences … that can impact your future.”

But the school stands in a precarious position.

While Uplift was founded with the expectation its student body would primarily come from Uptown, it’s not designated a neighborhood school by Chicago Public Schools. Without a consistent stream of incoming students, or draws like International Baccalaureate or performing arts programs, its enrollment stands at 107 students. Last year, the school used less than 10% of its space.

While there is a moratorium on school closures until 2025, local community members and advocates fear Uplift is poised to fail amid gentrification in the neighborhood. Angela Clay, a member of Uplift’s inaugural graduating class in 2009, cited the example of nearby Stewart Elementary School, which was one of 50 schools closed in 2013 due to declining enrollment. Now, the site houses luxury apartments in Uptown.

“If you bleed a school of its children that go to low income and affordable housing in the neighborhood, then you bleed the building,” Clay said at a news conference before a Chicago Board of Education meeting last month. “But it is an amazing building and we will not let the hands of developers touch it.”

Now, advocates and representatives of the Uplift Local School Council are calling on CPS to make that building a neighborhood high school by giving it attendance boundaries. That would establish an “organic flow” of students from Uptown, said Marc Kaplan, a community representative on Uplift’s Local School Council.

A CPS spokesperson noted that in the district’s choice-based high school system, “many CPS high schools do not have attendance boundaries.”

Currently, most of Uptown feeds into Nicholas Senn High School in Edgewater, a neighborhood school located about two miles away with more than 1,500 students.

Uplift is considered a citywide program, meaning any student in Chicago can apply, and no one is automatically admitted unless they apply. Uplift offers general education, special education and career and technical education. According to CPS data from the last school year, about 55% of students are Black and 26% are Hispanic. More than 70% of students are low income.

Uplift offers early college and STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math — programs and works to showcase these opportunities when recruiting students. But instead of having to recruit a new class each year, advocates want the school to instead be filled with students from the neighborhood.

Kaplan said he participated in the creation of the school and that CPS “promised” the school’s founders Uplift would do that.

According to the school’s founding documents, it was established under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Renaissance 2010 plan, which aimed to close failing schools and reopen new ones. CPS closed Arai Middle School in 2005 and sought proposals for what to do with the space.

A key part of the Renaissance 2010 plan was increasing charter schools, which was one of the proposals considered for Uplift. But community members advocated for a proposal created by Arai teachers to establish what was envisioned as a predominantly neighborhood school, Kaplan said.

The initial founding documents state Uplift was meant serve 460 students in grades six to nine, with plans to add high school grade levels in the future. Kaplan said the plan later shifted to Uplift becoming a high school.

The vision for the school was for Uplift to foster relations “in the Uptown community,” according to the document.

“A majority of students are expected to come from the Uptown community, although students from outside of Uptown will be able to attend if space is available,” the document states.

CPS also said it would work with the community to “develop an attendance plan for the school,” which opened in Fall 2005.

Seventeen years later, families have to choose Uplift directly, like Shyan’s mother, Robin Johnson, did. Johnson, a parent representative on the Local School Council, said Uplift’s dual enrollment offerings, social justice initiatives and her ability as a parent to participate in curriculum development were the primary draws for her and her daughter.

One opportunity the school gave Shyan was the chance to see the play “1919,” which explores the resistance of Black Chicagoans. Johnson helped develop cross-disciplinary lesson plans focused on the Black Panther Party.

“I’ve never seen a school do that,” Johnson said.

At last month’s Board of Education meeting, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter called on the board to make sure Uplift is not another “failed experiment,” citing the example of Urban Prep Academies, whose charters the board voted to revoke later in the meeting.

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Districtwide, CPS is experiencing enrollment declines, losing its status as the third-largest school system in the country.

And CPS has a number of other tiny high schools also struggling to maintain robust populations: Hirsch Metropolitan High on the South Side is about the same size as Uplift with about 100 students, according to the CPS website. Austin College and Career Academy lists an enrollment of about 175, while another West Side building, Manley Career Academy High, has only about 70 students.

At the board meeting, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez attributed some of these declines among seventh and eighth graders to the current high school enrollment process. Martinez said he is already being asked about plans for his own son, who is only in 6th grade.

“I can’t help but link it to how complex it is for our middle school students as they’re thinking about high school options,” Martinez said.

Part of CPS’ blueprint to address this, beyond its plans for the 2022-23 “recovery” year, is to “redesign our admissions and enrollment policies and processes” and includes “reinvesting in and planning for the future of neighborhood schools,” according to the presentation.

“We think we have a lot of room to really look at this policy and go back to our original goals — equity of access,” Martinez said.

mellis@chicagotribune.com