South of the storefront Baptist churches, fish and chicken shacks, and the yellow and red signs of block-to-block currency exchanges, Southside Occupational Academy sits nestled on the 7000 block of Hoyne Avenue. Near Lindblom Park, where geese play in abandoned football fields, the yards are overgrown and homes with boarded-up windows have “Mallory for alderman” spray painted across the plywood. The blinking blue lights of police surveillance cameras and handwritten “We accept Link” notices in convenience store windows announce the neighborhood’s poverty with glaring clarity.
But the blocks immediately surrounding Southside Occupational Academy are somehow different. The rundown streets morph into quiet residential strips with simply kept, unassuming homes where neighbors exchange pleasantries over front porch cups of coffee. The location, a surprising escape from the troubled West Englewood community, seems an almost perfect place to receive an education.

The block’s tranquility isn’t mirrored within the school; there is nothing quiet about Southside Occupational. A vocational public high school for students with mild to severe cognitive disabilities, it operates at almost 150 percent capacity—so full that the administration no longer accepts incoming students. This decision affects a wide geographic range of children. Southside educates students south of 55th street, west to the city border and all the way to Indiana, says Gwendolyn Mims, in her third year as Southside’s principal.

The overcrowding has forced the school to conduct classes in the garage, where students sit on plastic chairs atop the damp cement floor, blanketed by a ceiling of rafters covered with a dark, thick, unidentified substance. The class syllabus is posted on the rolling garage door. Other classes are held in the greenhouse, where the glass panels convert sunlight into sweltering heat in warmer months and offer little insulation from Chicago’s frigid winter air. The activities hall has been converted into two classrooms, separated by moveable cloth dividers. On one side, a young language arts teacher attempts to instruct her students over the echoing vocational training of a janitorial class on the other.
Down the hall, senior boys shoot hoops in a gymnasium smaller than those in standard elementary schools. A boy stands dazed beneath the hoop, transfixed on something the rest cannot see. One of his classmates throws a basket. The ball bounces a foot from his face. He stumbles back as though in slow motion, keeping the same expression.
Mims notices his strange behavior. “What’s wrong today?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
As she turns to exit the gymnasium, she confronts another student walking with his P.E. instructor. “Were you acting up?” Mims asks him.
“We just needed to take a walk,” says the gym teacher, explaining that Tom* was arguing with Billy*. When Mims calls Billy over to talk about the problem, Tom’s relaxed expression immediately hardens. He points a calloused finger directly at Billy and pantomimes slitting his throat. “No! You’re not going to cut this throat,” Mims says without missing a beat. “We don’t fight here.”

The incident is resolved within minutes. The boys smile sheepishly and Tom salutes Mims and returns to the gym.
Students like this would likely be suspended or expelled under “zero tolerance” policies at conventional schools. At Southside, educators understand how differently individuals with special needs sometimes express themselves. “Zero tolerance is theoretically directed at students who misbehave intentionally, yet it also applies to those who misbehave as a result of emotional problems or other disabilities,” according to a 2000 report by the American Bar Association’s Juvenile Justice Committee. At Southside, teachers and administrators are able to make this distinction.
The school day is a chronological string of distractions for educators and students. They practice math equations across the hall from pounding and sawing that resonates from the woodshop; teachers bring their supplies with them throughout the day on what they call “classes on a cart.”

“Not having the space to provide the kind of instruction we are known to provide really limits what we can do with the students,” says Mims.

Unlike traditional schools, Southside focuses on helping students become as self-sufficient as possible. Students learn basic skills like cooking, laundry and personal hygiene, in addition to social rules, and laws and consequences. Individuals physically and cognitively able to enter the workforce after graduation are placed in entry-level jobs with assistance from the Bridge program, which helps low-income or low-skilled adults obtain job training.

The facility, built in 1987, has been overcrowded for about 10 years, Mims says. It was designed to house 150 students and currently serves 223, though enrollment once peaked at 250. To address this problem, Southside stopped enrolling ninth and tenth graders five years ago. Students attend conventional high schools during these years, and Mims feels the transition limits the effectiveness of the students’ education. With less time to teach life skills in addition to academics, Mims is concerned “they don’t get the best use of their time to really drill the independent living skills. Our emphasis is to teach them to navigate the community and teach them entry level [skills].”

Students with disabilities are entitled to a free and appropriate public education until they are 22 under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, but Mims feels the longer students can be educated in this type of setting, the better chance they have of success.

Even with the delayed entry age, students are often turned away because they can’t be accommodated. “They don’t have anywhere else to go because once they’re done with their two years [at a] conventional high school, they want them out,” says Tracy Navarro, a language arts teacher at Southside. “Most of the time they just end up getting lost somewhere, sitting at home and doing nothing.”

Mims says they can apply to other occupational programs in Chicago at the Ray Graham Training Center, Northside Learning Center and Las Casas Occupational High School. But those schools also are  overcrowded, and they are far away. She doesn’t know what happens to the growing number of students Southside can’t accommodate.

Southside isn’t a high priority for the Chicago Public Schools because of the current emphasis on inclusion, which aims to integrate students with disabilities in traditional schools. While integration may be beneficial for some students, Mims says the vocational and self-help training they need aren’t offered in conventional schools. “I don’t know how successful our students would be in a regular program all the time,” she says.

She’s not alone. Many educators have “serious reservations about supporting the widespread placement of pupils with special education needs,” according to a 2007 report issued by the International Journal of Special Education. Mims is proud that her school is able to do many of the conventional activities of regular schools, like high school dances and sporting events, while still providing them with the life training they need.

“We’re teaching the skills that they need in real life,” says Navarro, noting that she could not teach the way she does in a conventional school. “It really is a disservice to our students to be cramped up in here.”

On October 24, parents and teachers fed up with Southside’s overcrowded conditions voiced their concerns at a school board meeting. Chicago Public Schools officials acknowledged the need for change at the school and promised a solution within two weeks. But two months later, as Echo goes to print, a decision had yet to be made, and the school’s future remains uncertain. “I don’t know [if the school could close],” Mims says. “I would hope not, but I really honestly don’t know.”

*Students’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.