488: Harper High School - Part Two

Ira Glass

Hey everybody. Ira here. This episode of our show contains words that were beeped when we broadcast this over the radio that are not beeped in this online version.

Leonetta Sanders, the principal of Harper High School in Chicago, has a decision to make. And she has to make it right away. She has to decide whether to cancel the school's homecoming game and dance.

Ira Glass

She calls her staff together for a meeting. The day before this, when everybody was at a pep rally in the gym for Homecoming, a 16-year-old who attended Harper last year and dropped out, who still had friends here, was shot just a few blocks from school. Immediately, the staff jumped into action.

If you heard our radio program last week, you heard this part of the story, where it was the gang responsible for the shooting had members on the football team. So Principal Sanders was scared that there might be retaliation at the game or at the dance. They sent home a handful of kids they thought might be in danger.

Here is what happens next. When the staff now assembles on Friday afternoon, Principal Sanders informs them that there's news. Another incident.

Ira Glass

Nobody was hurt in this latest shooting. Though I think to any outsider, it's hard to imagine Harper not canceling Homecoming at this point. The school has just come off a terrible year in which 29 current and recent students were shot. Eight of them died. Dozens more were in incidents where bullets were fired, but they didn't get hit.

These murders, as you would expect, were hard on faculty and students alike. But partly because it's been so tough, Principle Sanders wants very badly to give her students the fun, normal stuff that other high school students get, as much as she can. She really wants them to have a Homecoming dance. And so, her decision--

Ira Glass

When school lets out at the end of the day, it's tense. There are more police cars than usual. Harper security staff and administrators are out on the sidewalks in force. Principal Sanders is wary as she looks up and down the street for any kids that seem out of place, who might be there for the wrong reasons.

Ira Glass

Sanders talks to one of the police officers. He throws on his lights, drives down the block, questions the kid, puts him against the wall and checks for weapons, and then lets him go. And very soon, it's time for the game.

Ira Glass

There's no violence at the game, unless you count the incredible trouncing the Harper Cardinals give to Marshall High School.

[CHEERING]

Final score, 40 to 0. Later, at the Homecoming dance, dressed up kids slowly stream through the metal detector.

Ira Glass

As for the dance, after all the worrying and the beefed-up security, what ended up happening is nothing-- the best possible outcome. The teenager who had been shot on Thursday, James Williams, made it to the hospital and survived. Maybe because of that, there was no other immediate bloodshed. Kids dance in a darkened gym. On the bleachers, you can make out Barielle, the Homecoming Queen, her dainty crown bouncing up and down at the center of this mass of kids.

For the staff, who have been here at this point for 14 hours, the significance of this moment is not lost. It's regular life. They were able to give the kids regular high school for a night-- a dance. Three girlfriends collect crumpled dollar bills together to make $10 bucks so they can pose, one in wobbly high heels, in front of the fake Roman columns and sky-blue backdrop the photographer's set up.

Ira Glass

Today on our radio program, we spend a second hour at Harper High School on Chicago's South Side. We sent three reporters there for five months, starting at the beginning of this school year, because of all the shootings they've had. We have all heard a lot about gun violence and kids in the last few months. Here at our radio program, we wanted to understand what the staff and families at Harper know about this violence that most of us around the country do not know.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. You do not have to have heard our first hour on Harper High School to follow what happens in this second hour.

We're going to be focusing more on the students in this hour. We're going to get to know a few of their stories. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The Eyewitness. Most murders in Chicago-- 82% of them in 2011-- happen in public places, parks and streets and alleyways and cars. And lots of kids at Harper will tell you that they personally have actually seen someone shot. One of the three reporters we sent into the school, Alex Kotlowitz, has this story about a student who has seen more than his share.

Alex Kotlowitz

In the five months I spent at Harper, nearly every time I visited the school's social work office, which was often, Thomas, a junior, would be there, too, during classes, passing periods, lunch, whenever. So much that one day I asked him, hey, every time I come here, you're here. Why do you hang out here so much?

Alex Kotlowitz

Thomas has witnessed an incredible amount of violence. Last June, he was standing on the porch of an abandoned building, talking with another Harper student, Shakaki Asphy, when she was shot and killed. This, though, wasn't the first murder Thomas had witnessed.

Back in 2006, he was at a birthday party for 10-year-old girl, Siretha White, nicknamed Nugget, when someone shot though the front window. Thomas says he remembers being led out of the house by the police and seeing Nugget laying on the floor with what appeared to be her brains next to her. Nugget's killing happened when Thomas was 10. Shakaki's murder was when Thomas was 17. And as his social worker, Anita Stewart, tells it, there have been many, many in between.

Alex Kotlowitz

Thomas's brother has been shot on three separate occasions. Thomas witnessed all of them, including the time his brother was paralyzed.

Alex Kotlowitz

Thomas and Anita have an interesting relationship. He's pretty combative, kind of churlish. At times, it almost seems like he doesn't even like Anita very much. But the truth is they're incredibly close.

Anita splits her time between Harper and another high school. And the two or three days a week she's at Harper, Thomas always comes to see her. She frequently visits him on his block and at his house, and affectionately calls him big baby. I don't think Thomas opens up much to many people, but he does with Anita.

Alex Kotlowitz

You can hear it in Thomas's voice, muffled and sluggish, as if he's speaking from deep inside a cave. Even his physical demeanour makes it clear he'd just as well disappear.

His braided hair hangs over his eyes. He often has a hood on. He won't look you in the eye. Anita's trying to pull him out of his hiding.

Alex Kotlowitz

At the end of October, on the first floor, the school put up a memorial display for Shakaki, the girl Thomas was standing next to when she was killed. It's a glass case filled with pictures of her and her friends, a basketball signed by her teammates, and a note Anita had written to her after she died. Shakaki, who, like so many kids at Harper, half expect to die young, had told Anita if she was killed, she wanted her to put a note in her casket. After she was killed, Anita wrote the note, but you couldn't bring herself to put it in which Shakaki.

Anita had worked with Shakaki for two years. And she's still struggling with their own grief over her death. And partly, it's the shared grief that draws Anita and Thomas together. Like Thomas, Anita hasn't been able to bring herself to look at the memorial.

Alex Kotlowitz

Try to hurt somebody, he says. Trying to hurt someone or wanting to hurt someone, these are things Thomas has said a lot. One time when I asked him where he thought he might be in 10 years, he said, might be in jail, because I think I'm going to hurt someone.

Mostly it felt like tough talk, like teenage bravado. But on this day, when talking about Shakaki, it started to become clear that this kind of talk, talk about hurting someone, isn't just tough guy bragging. I began to realize that Thomas was trying the best he could to be honest about some feelings he has, feelings that scare him. Thomas begins by haltingly explaining what happened the night Shakaki was shot.

He was standing on the porch, Shakaki next to him. They were just hanging out, just talking. Thomas's brother was in his wheelchair on the sidewalk in front.

When the shooter, dressed in a gray hoodie, came running up alongside the building, Thomas pleaded with him not to shoot. But the shooter fired several rounds, hitting Shakaki three times and Thomas's brother once in the thigh. Thomas ran but quickly came back. He says that when Shakaki was laying on the ground, he first thought she'd be OK.

Alex Kotlowitz

She was saying that it burned. When the ambulances finally showed up, they took Shakaki and Thomas's brother to the hospital, leaving Thomas alone. He didn't go home. He was just alone.

Alex Kotlowitz

At the gas station, he didn't find anyone.

Alex Kotlowitz

He was filled with grief, anxiety, guilt. And then he got into a fight.

Alex Kotlowitz

Thomas says an older kid on the street pushed his little cousin to the ground. Thomas was furious. He went after the older boy.

Alex Kotlowitz

Thomas punched the boy so hard, one of the boy's teeth got stuck in Thomas hand. Later that night, his grandma took him to the hospital. And he eventually had surgery on his hand.

He told me that once he hurt his hand, he was able to sleep again. It was that simple. Getting into this stupid fight, it brought him relief.

Thomas has said many times that he knows something violent is going to happen again. It could be random. He says bullets fly all the time.

One could come through the living room window and hit his grandma. Or a stray bullet could hit Anita when she's on the block. What happens happens, he often says. And when it happens next, he knows he'll need relief again.

Alex Kotlowitz

Anita's trying to convince Thomas to deal with his feelings in other ways. Not long ago, they visited Shakaki's gravesite together. Anita says is was big deal for Thomas to go. I'm proud of him, she told me.

Ira Glass

Alex Kotlowitz, he'll be back later in our hour.

Ira Glass

Act Two, Your Name Written On Us. In the unofficial school calendar for Harper, there are these anniversaries of days that certain kids were shot or the birthdays of those same kids. They have a big enough effect on what happens at school that the administration and the police department keep track of these days. They can be dangerous.

One of the important anniversaries in the fall is TG day, named for Terrance Green. In all kinds of ways since his death at 16, Terrance Green has become one of the iconic figures in the neighborhood around Harper. Ben Calhoun looked into how that happened.

Ben Calhoun

Terrance Green was murdered during summer break, July, 2009. But more than a month later, when kids came back to school, the grief over his death. It was still flooding from the neighborhood into Harper.

Ben Calhoun

Crystal Smith, one of the school's social workers. In some ways, she says that wasn't so surprising. Terrance was popular and charming and funny. But she was still not expecting what she saw next.

Ben Calhoun

The new clique, the new gang that Terrance's death gave birth to, today it controls 23 city blocks in the neighborhood east of Harper. It's called Terrance Green City, goes by the initials TGC. Sometimes it's called True Gangster City.

For TGC and two or three other allied gangs, the dates of Terrance's death and his birthday in November, in the neighborhood, those days are a big deal. Hundreds of people turn out for street parties. And around those times, the hostility over Terrance's murder, it can all come back. Crystal remembers last November. The staff was told to clear out of the building immediately when school ended.

Ben Calhoun

Assault rifles. Some of the police outside the school were carrying assault rifles.

Ben Calhoun

Three years after Terrance Green's murder, the legacy left by it continues to sprawl. The song you're hearing is just one of the many tributes to Terrance online. There's also slide shows, collages, videos, some with slick editing and production. Lots are on YouTube.

Ben Calhoun

The mythology around Terrance and the devotion to him, it's intense. Kids who know Terrance use his last name, Green, in place of their own. This was confusing at first, when I met several of his friends who told me their last name was Green. But the most troubling example of Terrance's legacy was this series of videos made by kids.

The footage is choppy and grainy, like it's shot on a cell phone. It's of about a dozen kids walking around the street at night. They range in age from maybe 9 or 10 to early high school. Here, they are threatening and taunting a rival gang, S-Dub, which is also called the Dub. It's the gang that's widely believed by students, Harper staff, and police to have killed Terrance.

Ben Calhoun

Toward the end of the video, one particular kid appears. He looks like he's barely out of middle school, somewhere between 12 and 14. In his right hand is a gun, a semi-automatic.

He points it at the camera. He shouts hate at opposing gangs. He praises the territory he says he's protecting, Terrance Green City.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

The feud between TGC and S-Dub that followed Terrance's death, it's turned into a long chain of retaliation. Principle Sanders says her staff knows of seven murders and more than 10 other shootings that lead back to Terrance. This list includes Cedric Bell, one of Harper's students killed last year.

And it's not like Terrance's story is one of a kind. There's other cliques around Harper named after kids who were murdered. There's Bird gang northwest of the school named after Martel Barrett, whose nickname was Bird. He was killed the same year as Terrance. There's Face World, named for a kid whose street name was Face. There's Frank World and Dome City.

It makes you wonder about the lives of these kids, kids like Terrance. Why did his death lead to songs and kids using his last name in place of their own to assault rifles outside Harper and a remapping of the violence around the school? Why this 16-year-old?

Terrance grew up in a house with two loving, hardworking parents. This is his dad here, Tony Owens. He's a full-time bus driver and a union official for the Chicago Transit Authority. His mother, Lorraine Green, works at a bank. Together, the couple raised five kids.

Terrance's siblings, at this point, have all graduated from high school. One's in college. The rest are all doing well. His older brother is a pastor.

Ben Calhoun

A friend of Terrance's dropped by during one of my visits to Mr. Owens. Boogie was one of the closest people to Terrance. They were friends since third grade. As you're going to hear, there are some big differences in the way they see Terrance's story.

But here's the stuff they agree on. Terrance was an amazing athlete and a leader. When he was in middle school, he played quarterback for a youth league team that went to a national championship.

And they both say the problem started when Terrance was in high school. He and Boogie had to walk to Harper through a rival neighborhood. The kids there would bully Terrance and his friends. And then Terrance, he had a teenage fling with and then dumped the little sister of a gang member from the other neighborhood, from S-Dub, the gang that people believe killed him later.

Ben Calhoun

The way Mr. Owens describes the situation, it was half girl problem, half bully problem. There were some fights in school, some fights on the street. And one Friday afternoon, Terrance got shot in a drive-by. Police reports show the brother was brought in for questioning but was not charged. No one was ever charged.

And this is where Boogie's version of the story separates from Mr. Owens's on a crucial point. Mr. Owens says Terrance and Boogie and their friend's weren't in a gang. Boogie says that was true, but only at first.

Boogie tells the story this way. When it all started, there was the gang that the girl's brother was in, S-Dub. They were fighting with the older guys in Terrance's neighborhood who were in a gang called Seven Deuce. Boogie has no idea what that war was about-- girls, money, who knows? They'd been at it for years, he says.

He and Terrance and their friends, they were separate from all that. They were just kids. They were interested in sports and music. They could cross into S-Dub's territory.

They'd go over, hang out, play basketball. It was no big deal. But by the time they got to high school, it was like a switch flipped on them.

Ben Calhoun

Boogie says the guys from S-Dub, they just assumed they were with Seven Deuce because they were young men living in the neighborhood. So S-Dub would drive up, point guns at them, threaten them. They'd steal from them and take their stuff, embarrass them in front of girls. It was humiliating.

And avoiding all that didn't seem like an option. Police or parents or teachers weren't about to step in and fix it. So they turned to each other. They did what a lot of teenage boys might do in that situation. They decided they weren't going to back down.

One member of TGC tells me Terrance got his friends together for a meeting. He said he was starting something new, a new group. He named it Yung Lyfe, which stood for young, unique, noble gentlemen living youthful and fulfilled every day.

Ben Calhoun

All this was news to Mr. Owens, Terrance's dad. He never knew that Terrance and his friends were fighting back this way. And when he hears "fight fire with fire," the implication of that, it isn't something Mr. Owens is really ready to accept.

Ben Calhoun

You can hear how delicate and respectful Boogie's trying to be with his friend's dad. But Mr. Owens insists, you didn't have any guns. And finally, Boogie admits it pretty plainly.

Ben Calhoun

Other friends of Terrance's have told me, by the summer when he was killed, the shooting was pretty much constant. One said, "I'm not going to lie. We were shooting pretty much every day. It was wolf season," he said.

When they talk about what all this was like, you can totally see why they memorialize Terrance the way they do-- because there'd been this moment when they felt scared and unprotected. He was the one that rallied them. He was their leader. And because he was their leader, he became a target. "He died for us," Boogie told me.

You can see why they'd want to name their neighborhood after him. Boogie says part of what made those years so frightening for them is that they were underdogs. They were younger, smaller. And they had to figure out for themselves how to fight back. The older guys, the ones in Seven Deuce who'd started the war, they hadn't recruited them. They hadn't taught them how it all worked.

Ben Calhoun

Of course, to an adult, this is upside down world logic, that the one thing that could have helped them and maybe saved Terrance's life was being recruited and trained by a gang, that the only adults who could have helped them were gang members. And the more Boogie said stuff like this, how they inherited this war, the more upset Mr. Owens got.

Ben Calhoun

Mr. Owens has lived in the neighborhood since 1986. He thought he understood how the gangs worked. They were organized. They sold drugs.

You joined, got initiated. You became a bad guy. It was clear who was in them and who wasn't. The world Boogie was describing, where his son was kind of drafted into a gang war he didn't even really want to be a part of, that didn't make sense to Mr. Owens.

Towards the end of our conversation, we looked at a map of that new reality. We looked at the gang map Harper High School uses, where Terrance's initials, TG City, sit on a big rectangle southeast of the high school. Mr. Owen's had never seen anything like it.

It upset him even more. TG City, he said. He'd always thought that was just a nice nickname the kids had given to the neighborhood, a way of remembering his son, not a gang.

Ben Calhoun

After a few minutes, we walked outside to take a break and get some fresh air. Mr. Owens stood on his porch. He told me a story about how the last time he'd seen Terrance was on his porch. It was morning. Mr. Owens was on his way to work. And he watched as his son walked around the corner to see Boogie and go get a haircut.

Today he stood there, staring at the house kitty corner to his. On one wall of it, there was spray paint that said TGC. Mr. Owen's stared, shaking his head. I don't like that, he said. I don't like that at all.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun.

Ben Calhoun

Act Three, How Kids Get Guns. Chicago's gun control laws are strict. There are no gun shops in the city, no shooting ranges. There's a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

But somehow, of course, kids are being shot by other kids. Teenagers can't just walk into a store or a gun show and buy a gun. So how do they get them? The third of our Harper reporters, Linda Lutton, asked.

Linda Lutton

I talked to eight Harper students at school one day.

Most them are freshman, 15 years old. It was often hard at Harper to get kids to talk about how they felt about the violence in their neighborhood. But when it came to something concrete, like where a kid around here would get a gun, it was easy to get into a detailed conversation about dirty guns and clean guns and the prices of each. They said if it's a cheap gun on the street, you have to be careful. It might have a murder on it.

Linda Lutton

And they know how clean guns, guns with no murders on them, end up on the street.

Linda Lutton

The boys argue for a while over how much a .22 caliber handgun would be worth-- $25, $40, $150, or if it's worth anything at all since it's not a big gun. And who are they getting the guns from?

Linda Lutton

Of course, this isn't the most satisfying answer to the question, where do you get your gun? To shrug and say, "from my friends," it doesn't explain how your friends get them. Guns arrive in the neighborhood through all the means you've probably heard of-- straw purchasers, gun show loopholes. The feds recently charged a college student with buying duffel bags full of guns at Indiana gun shows for sale on Chicago streets.

A University of Chicago crime lab analysis has shown that the biggest proportion of police-recovered guns, around 40%, are purchased legally just outside Chicago, in the suburbs or Indiana. One of the police officers who works at Harper told me $40 or $50 would be a normal price around the neighborhood for a revolver. $100 will get you a semiautomatic.

But talking to these kids, I realize they often can get a gun for nothing at all. They're free. This kid got two guns from his brother.

Linda Lutton

One kid says he was given a gun by fellow gang members who handed it to him, he says, for having certain rank in the gang. He was 14. Another boy who's backed away from his gang, he moved out of Englewood, says he could still get a gun if he needed it for something, as long as he promised to bring it back. Another boy says his mom has a gun, a legal gun. She keeps it in a box, he says.

Linda Lutton

He was near 67th Street, three blocks from Harper.

Linda Lutton

All the kids agree, if a gun's in your house, the police can find it in a raid. So people stash them. This one was on the side of the garage.

Linda Lutton

The boy kept the gun for a while. Later, because he couldn't figure out how to get any bullets for it and because, he says, he had no use for it, he gave it to a friend. When I asked what type of gun it was, the boy said he was too little to know at the time.

He only knew it was black. But now that he's older, 15, he does know. It was a .45.

Linda Lutton

As you'd expect, some guns are more popular than others.

Linda Lutton

He's not talking about a specific gun but an accessory, a magazine that holds 30 rounds.

Linda Lutton

A lot of these student say they know kids who are only alive because the shooters have such bad aim. That could be another reason why the long clips are popular with kids. It's a good accessory to have when you can't shoot.

Ira Glass

Linda Lutton. Coming up, you may remember that teenager who shot his own brother that we talked about in last week's program. We get back to him and what happened to him as the school year progressed. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. This is the second of two hours that we're broadcasting about Harper high school in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago's South Side. Last year, the school had 29 shootings of current and recent students. We've had three reporters there for five months, starting at the beginning of the school year. We have arrived Act Four of our show. Act Four, Devonte, Part Two.

One of our reporters, Alex Kotlowitz, spent his time at school in the social work office because that's a place that directly and intensively addresses the effects of the neighborhood's violence on specific students who go to the school. We heard one of the school's two social workers, Anita Stewart, earlier this hour.

Crystal Smith is the other one. Crystal is relentlessly bright, positive, cheerful, peppy-- like, aggressively so. Here's how, early in the year, she says goodbye to a kid in her office who is leaving for class.

Linda Lutton

By late November this year, though, things have kind of changed. Alex explains how.

Alex Kotlowitz

It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break. And I run into Crystal Smith who's just coming in to work. She collapses into her chair.

[DOOR SLAMS]

Alex Kotlowitz

Crystal tells me that last night she went to the ER. She was worried she was having a stroke. But the doctor told her it was most likely symptoms of stress. But Crystal isn't just having a bad day. Work has been wearing her down. And others, it seem, are having a hard time, too.

A week earlier, an administrator became so concerned about Crystal that she sent her, along with the school's other social worker and the school psychologist, to a counseling session just for the three of them. She wanted them to begin to process and move past all the crises and the shocks and the funerals they've been through the past year. Crystal and Anita, the other social worker, told me the session was helpful. But they also said it felt sort of pointless.

"It's not over," they said. Yeah, there haven't been any students killed this year. But the shooting hasn't stopped. I point out that that's how the kids must feel sometimes, and they agree. In the office, I tell Crystal that she looks tired.

Alex Kotlowitz

Crystal's been working towards a second master's degree, and in one of her classes this year has been reading a book I wrote over 20 years ago called There Are No Children Here, where I follow two brothers living in the projects on Chicago's West Side. For a couple of years, I followed the boys as they grappled with violence, poverty, and the gangs. And Crystal wonders if reading it isn't adding to her stress.

Alex Kotlowitz

One of the things that's stressing Crystal out is her relationship with a junior named Devonte. Earlier in the year, Crystal begin meeting regularly with Devonte. I talked about him in last week's show. Last February, Devonte accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old brother. Since then, his sister has stopped talking to him. And things have been strained with his mom.

Before the accident, Devonte was kind of notorious as a problem kid at Harper. He would curse out the staff. And he hardly showed up for school. But since the beginning of this school year, Devonte's been turning it around.

He comes to see Crystal sometimes two or three times a day. In spurts, he talks about his feelings, especially his guilt over his brother's death. He's pulled up his grades, getting Bs and Cs in almost all of his classes, the best grades he's ever had in high school.

So much of this success, I think, has to do with Crystal. For three months, she's let him know he doesn't need to go through this all alone. She encourages him to think about the future he wants for himself. Once when Devonte had stopped by, Crystal had pulled out photographs from a recent vacation she took with her husband in Jamaica.

Alex Kotlowitz

So this conversation took place earlier in the fall. Now, today, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, it seems like Devonte is drifting. Like Crystal and Anita, he just seems spent.

Crystal tells me Devonte's become agitated. He's announced that he's only going to come to school three days a week. I asked Devonte if he'd sit down with me and explain what's going on. I began by asking him about his relationship with Crystal.

Alex Kotlowitz

I started to ask Devonte a bit about his brother and about the accident. But he told me that he didn't really want to talk about it-- which, you know, fair enough. He told me that he hates memories.

Alex Kotlowitz

That conversation happened two days before the Thanksgiving break. When I next meet up with Crystal a few weeks later, she tells me that Devonte has stopped coming to school, that she hasn't heard from him. What's worse, though, is that she says she's heard from some of the school staff that he's been picked up by the police on a gun possession charge. Crystal calls Devonte's mom to find out what's going on.

Alex Kotlowitz

Devonte's mom confirms that, yes, Devonte had been picked up on a gun charge, and that earlier in the week went to court for a preliminary hearing. She says that once Devonte heard that he could get locked up for 19 months, he got scared and took off. He literally ran out of the courthouse. He's now on the run. She says she's not sure where he's staying now.

Crystal knows that Devonte will just get more caught up in the streets, fending for himself, and that at some point the police will get him. And when they do, he's facing serious charges-- the gun charge itself, violation of probation, which he was on for the accidental shooting, maybe running from the court.

Alex Kotlowitz

A few days later, Crystal calls Devonte. She tells him not to say where he is, so she won't have to lie for him. She then runs through what, for them, has by now become a familiar exercise.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Crystal asks. The good Devonte, he replies. Then Crystal remind him, don't forget he's in there.

Ira Glass

Alex Kotlowitz.

Ira Glass

Act Five, Reverse Turnaround Backflip. The time of year that we're in right now is hard for Principal Sanders because it's budget time, planning next year's budget. Harper is actually in a good situation this year with money. But as Ben Calhoun explains, that's about to change.

Ben Calhoun

Harper's in a unique spot at the moment because it's what the Chicago school system calls a turnaround school. A few years ago, the system said Harper need an overhaul. So they turned over most of the staff, brought in new people, and infused the school with money, a lot of money.

Just to give you an idea, Harper's total budget this year is $8.9 million. $1.6 million of that is turnaround money. Last year, the turnaround money was even bigger, almost $2 million.

One former district official involved in Harper's turnaround told me that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who used to run Chicago's schools, he said to his former colleagues, with these new turnaround initiatives, like the one at Harper, he wanted to, quote, "take the issue of money off the table," in other words, give them whatever they need. So the plan was pretty much boost the school with a lot of federal, state, and city money, then as the changes took hold, slowly ramp down the money.

And then five years later, the funding would go back to normal. That's next year. Next year is when the money goes away.

In the fall, I sat down with Principal Sanders and the school's operations manager to talk about all this. They told me the money has done so much. There's a new culinary learning room, new computer equipment, small stuff like a new ID machine.

Principal Sanders talks about the first year of turnaround like it was amazing. There were four assistant principals, reduced class sizes. There was the kind of support staff-- social workers and counselors-- in numbers that other schools only dream of.

The operations manager told me he's been a Chicago Public Schools money guy for 15 years. He's been at more than 10 other high schools. He told me he's seen programs like the turnaround program before. It was called other things-- intervention, reconstitution but he says bluntly that Harper is the first time he's seen it work, partly because there's just been more money this time.

So next year, though, Harper will lose the last $1.6 million of turnaround money, about 18% of its budget. And the biggest effect of that will be layoffs.

Ben Calhoun

What effect will layoffs have on Harper? I spend a couple mornings with a staff member named Marcel Smith. Marcel works on a program that tries to rescue kids who are failing out. Harper has a lot of initiatives like that. There's mentoring programs and enrichment programs, all boosted by turnaround.

So on paper, that's what Marcel does. But if you walk around with him, you see what Sanders sees, all the little things that would never be considered part of his job. The day I was with him, in the morning, Marcel came across a young man standing in the hallway.

Ben Calhoun

The kid was keeping a straight face. But he was clearly upset. It turned out he'd been asked to leave his class. As Marcel turned to deal with him, he asked me to turn off the recorder, so I did.

They talked for a minute. Marcel took the kid to his office, sat him down, told him to wait. And we walked away. He didn't want to use the student's name. But he explained what was going on.

Ben Calhoun

Cookies. It was cookies. And this student, along with everyone who'd gotten to class on time that day, was allowed to go up and take a cookie. But this particular student was dealing with a difficult and maybe dangerous situation at his house. So he hadn't gone home the night before. And because of that, he hadn't eaten.

So when he went up to take his cookie, he took two. The teacher told them to put one back. Not wanting to reveal his situation to the rest of the class, he didn't say anything. He just refused.

He told Marcel he was just so hungry. That's why he'd been kicked out. Marcel had a box of cereal in his office. And I walked with him as he zipped down to the cafeteria. They were out of regular milk.

Ben Calhoun

Back in Marcel's office, the student sat quietly, staring down, and ate a plastic bowl filled with Honey Nut Cheerios and chocolate milk. Then he got up, politely washed the bowl and spoon, said thank you to Marcel, and the two went back to his classroom. You see situations like this all the time at Harper, situations that could so easily unravel.

And without thinking anything of it, they get addressed because someone is there and makes the effort to figure out what's going on. It's stuff that'll never show up in a school budget. But it can be the difference between a kid going back to class or getting suspended.

Ben Calhoun

This is exactly what Principle Sanders is worried about next year when the turnaround money goes away, the people she'll have to give up. Marcel's position is funded through next year. But he's exactly the kind of person who there won't be money for. Assistant Principal Chad Adams, the school psychologist, numerous teaching positions-- not currently funded for next year. The social workers who you've heard working with Thomas and Devonte-- there's Crystal, and there's Anita-- next year, Anita will go away. And Crystal will only be part time.

Altogether, Harper expects to lose at least a dozen people, about a tenth of the current staff. Two of the security staff who have seen Harper go through overhauls in the past say it always changes when the money is added. But then everything goes backwards once it's lost. There's more fights. The violence gets worse.

Ben Calhoun

When Sanders first said that, it was a joke, not much to it. Except for what Ms. Sanders said then. She told me she does find herself thinking about what she would do if she won the lottery. And a lot of that money, she'd put it into the school.

Ben Calhoun

And then she laid out her plan.

Ben Calhoun

Sanders kept going like this for 4 minutes and 38 seconds. With her imaginary millions, she bought big things, like vacant land near the school. She rehabbed houses where students who are homeless would have a place to stay. She created transportation programs to get kids to and from school safely.

She did little things. She took a kid who came to school in a hoodie in the middle of winter, and she bought him a coat. She bought detergent for kids who didn't have soap to wash their uniforms. She spent, and she spent. 10 years, she said. She'd structure it out so that the money would be spread out over 10 years.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun.

Ira Glass

Act Six, We Are Harper High School.

[SCHOOL BELL RINGING]

Ira Glass

Last day of the semester. This is the day that we ended our reporting at Harper. Marcel Smith, saying goodbye to kids who are on their way home.

I saw that somebody tweeted after our first episode about Harper High School was broadcast. Somebody said that we found the most violent school in America or in Chicago or something. And I just want to say, that is not true.

Nobody keeps statistics like that. We just found a high school-- a high school that's seen a lot of shootings. And there are others.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by our senior producer Julie Snyder, with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, John Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Production help from Phia Bennin. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon's our production manager. Elise Bergerson is our administrative assistant.

Music help today from Damien Grey, from Rob Geddis. Original musical scoring for today's program by Rob under the name The Latebloomer. Other Latebloomer music is on SoundCloud.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website-- thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Tony Malatia, who went on one of those Prarie Home Companion vacations.

He showed me pictures. They're incredible. Every morning, Garrison Keillor personally wakes you at your bed in a white suit.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI-- Public Radio International.