Elizabeth Dozier principal at Christian Fenger Academy High School on the South Side, is wrapping up her first year at the academically-challenged school. The high school received national attention in September when amateur videotape showing one of its h
There was a time when 16-year-old Sineare Johnson was ashamed to tell anyone she attended Christian Fenger Academy High School on the South Side.
“It was embarrassing to listen to people talk about the school and the students,” Johnson told the Defender. “But now I am proud to be a Fenger student because things are improving and I like it here now.”
Johnson’s new attitude toward her school is not the only new thing at Fenger high school, 11220 S. Wallace Ave.
It also has a new principal and staff as Chicago Public Schools attempts to improve the school and turn it away from its murky past, which includes the school being on academic probation for 13 years.
Elizabeth Dozier, 32, the former co-principal at William Harper High School on the South Side, is now at the helm at Fenger, and said she is working hard to change the school’s negative image.
“Fenger is nationally known but for the wrong reasons,” she told the Defender. “One thing most people don’t know about Fenger is that we have some great kids here. We got a bad rap with the Derrion Albert incident and the media has painted a negative picture of us.”
She had been principal at Fenger fewer than two months before the school started receiving national attention following the videotaped murder of 16-year-old Albert, an honors student at the school, who was beaten to death allegedly by other male students for no apparent reason.
Chicago police said Albert was not in a gang and was simply standing at the bus stop waiting to go home when a fight broke out and several offenders began beating him with wooden boards.
The Albert slaying notwithstanding, Fenger has had some long standing academic challenges, as well as conflicts among students from different communities the school serves.
The graduation rate at the school, which has a predominately Black student population, is 33 percent while only 3 percent of the school’s 11th graders meet or exceed standards on the Prairie State Achievement Exam given to all CPS juniors, according to Fenger’s 2009 academic report card published by the Illinois State Board of Education.
Still for Dozier, safety at the school is a chief concern.
On the morning the Defender visited Fenger, Chicago police were visibly stationed in front of the school and around the corner. Police were also stationed there at the end of the school day, around 2:30 p.m., as a part of a safe passage initiative by CPS.
Safe passage to and from school for students is important to Dozier, who arranged for free bus service for the 100 Fenger students who live in the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex on the Far South Side.
Two yellow school buses pulled up to the front entrance the morning the Defender was there and students eagerly filed off the bus and entered the school. The bus service is available to Altgeld Gardens students as late as 7 p.m. to accommodate those who participate in after-school activities, including sports.
The principal said students are actively involved in all of the school’s sports programs, which include football, track, baseball, and boys and girls basketball.
Inside the school building, the atmosphere seems relaxed and peaceful, an environment Dozier said she tries to maintain at all times.
There’s no graffiti on the walls or anywhere else. Instead, most of the walls displayed artwork or drawings from students. The floors of the hallway shone as if they are waxed each night. There was no trash on the floors or broken lockers. All lockers displayed what looked like a fresh coat of red paint. The washrooms were clean and stocked with toilet paper and hand soap.
Dozier said she’d take credit for all of that since she considers herself a “neat freak.”
Some Fenger students say it is not so much the school that’s bad but a handful of students.
“The school is fine. It’s the students the teachers cannot control,” said Christine Pearson, a 17 year-old junior.
Those so-called “bad kids” often miss school and are failing most of their classes each semester, “so I can’t understand why are they still here,” said Quintina Cox, a 17 year-old junior. “They need to kick the bad kids out,” she added.
Dozier and her staff of 87 teachers and 27 security guards are aware of the hard work that lies ahead with changing the school’s public image, getting the school on a better academic road and stemming some of the friction that often ignites in the school and spills over into the streets surrounding the school, but insist things have changed for the better since September.
“Things have gotten better here. For starters I hired more male teachers.
It was important to me to identify qualified men to join the staff so they could serve not just as teachers but also as mentors to our young men,” Dozier said.
She estimates that 10 to 15 percent of the staff was held over from last year. Assistant Principal Ali Muhammad was among the original staff retained by Dozier. He grew up in the Roseland community on the South Side and said he supports Dozier’s vision in making Fenger the best neighborhood high school CPS has to offer.
“We want every student to leave here with something tangible they can use in the world because we recognize that everyone will not go to college,” he said.
But there are a number of obstacles that make it hard for some students to attend school. Teen pregnancy is one of them. Dozier said there are a lot of teen moms who attend Fenger.
Sabrina Porter, a 17 year-old junior, is seven months pregnant but said she plans to return to school in the fall so she can graduate.
Ultimately, Dozier said she would like to raise enough money to have a child care facility built inside the school to make it easier for teen moms like Porter to attend school.
One student who will not return next school year is 17 year-old Xavian White. The junior honors student said his family is moving to the south suburbs, so he’ll attend school out there.
“I won’t miss this place. It’s crazy coming here. I mean there are some good teachers here but there are too many bad and disrespectful kids at Fenger,” he said.
While most of the staff is new, many of the students have been at Fenger since their freshman year. Christina Rogers, a 16 year-old junior, said unlike last year, she sees a concerted effort on the part of teachers.
“At least they (teachers) are trying to teach us. Last year they simply gave up,” Rogers explained. “Last year the kids were so disrespectful that the teachers could not teach anything.”
Dozier said despite student behavior problems teachers sometimes encounter, no teacher has left since the school year began and she has no problem getting substitute teachers when needed.
But long before Albert was killed last year there had been friction with students from Altgeld Gardens and students who live near the school, according to Fenger student Quintina Cox, who added that the kids from Altgeld Gardens are not a problem.
“The problem is not them but the bad kids that go to Fenger,” Cox said.
Some business owners located near Fenger said they the doors to their establishment at 3 p.m. on school days so they can buzz students in, to control the flow of traffic.
Engaging students in the school is one strategy Dustin Voss, a social studies teacher at Fenger, said he uses to reach students.
“If you make students a part of the solution they will respond well,” he said. “The students here really want to see the school improve and they have a genuine interest in helping the staff make improvements.”
Copyright 2010 Chicago Defender.
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