Pat DeCicco, a parent volunteer patrol member, watched over students arriving at the West Belden charter school. John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative
When parents in some Chicago neighborhoods talk about keeping their streets safe for schoolchildren, they often refer to the times “before Derrion” and “after Derrion.”
The terms are a reference to 16-year-old Derrion Albert, who was beaten to death on Sept. 24 on his way home from Fenger High School. The brutality was caught on video and viewed around the world on the Web.
Before Derrion, similar violent incidents in and around schools had met with expressions of public outrage and had galvanized parents, police and school officials into renewed efforts to ensure safe passage for students. Then, as headlines and angry marches faded away, so did the momentum behind the anti-violence campaigns.
Derrion’s family hopes that his death will change that. Joseph Walker, a man Derrion lived with and knew as “Grandaddy Joe,” co-founded an organization called Pain to Power that aims to sustain safe-passage efforts, including parent patrols to help children travel safely around schools. And the Chicago Public Schools will take $2 million from a $30 million federal stimulus grant and apply it to safe passage, paying for community watches in 13 areas.
“The death of my grandson, that was something I just could not let go,” Mr. Walker said. “My agenda is to stop the violence, but I can’t do it without the adults.”
In an office building near U.S. Cellular Field recently, Mr. Walker stood at a third-floor window and pointed toward empty street corners where he envisions parents in brightly colored vests watching over children walking to and from school. In his vision they always make it home safely.
Adrienne Leonard, the co-founder and chief executive of Pain to Power, said the group hoped to clear obstacles that prevent parents from keeping a street-corner vigil every school day. The foundation, which includes Daniel W. Hynes, the Illinois comptroller, as an advisory board member, has been organizing parent training sessions and plans to support the patrols with jackets, radios, gloves and whatever else volunteers may need.
There will even be cash incentives in some cases. “When you can give somebody a $50 or a $100 check and thank them for their services, they’ll come back,” Ms. Leonard said.
Mr. Walker’s efforts at peacemaking take him into territory that has long been difficult for schools and the police to manage.
“It’s hard to get community engagement — period,” said Kenneth S. Trump, a school security consultant in Cleveland. “It’s especially hard to get community engagement consistently.”
Chicago Public Schools plans to use the remainder of the $30 million grant to create what it calls “culture of calm” programs in selected high schools and to mount an intensive effort to identify students most at risk and pair them with mentors, said Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the public schools.
The school district hopes to find more money for the programs after the federal stimulus money runs out, Ms. Bond said.
The lack of steady financing often derails school safety initiatives, Mr. Trump said. When a violent incident dominates the headlines, money often becomes available, but when the outrage quiets down, the money disappears. For example, he said, a family liaison program started last year by Cleveland schools with stimulus dollars already faces cuts.
“We legislate and fund by anecdote,” Mr. Trump said.
Pain to Power has submitted a bid to Chicago schools for a safe-passage contract, but Ms. Leonard said the group was already working in neighborhoods across the city and would continue to do so even without the contract.
One recent morning, Ms. Leonard was in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side to “connect the dots” linking schools, the police and the community.
Parents were shaken by an incident at a church across the street from the West Belden Campus of Chicago International Charter School. During a service, a fight broke out between rival gangs, who climbed over pews to throw punches, said Cheyla Molina, a parent volunteer now working with Pain to Power.
In addition, several weeks ago, members of a gang came to the charter school intending to beat up an eighth-grader.
“But they didn’t because of her,” Ms. Molina said, pointing to Anna Maria Martinez next to her, a mother who intervened to stop the fight. Other parents arranged for the child’s parents to pick him up so he could get home safely that day. Since then, parents have been more visible on the corners after school.
Chicago schools and the police have long relied on parents and grandparents to keep watch before or after school. Though they are there unofficially, they carry an air of authority that can discourage any trouble. The idea behind the safe-passage programs is to organize parent patrols into a more reliable means of protection.
LaVesha Tiger-Williams, a youth services coordinator for the Chicago Police Department, has been training parents for this duty for 15 years and is familiar with peaks and valleys of community involvement.
“For a short amount of time,” Ms. Tiger-Williams said, “we’ll have a large group of parents really want to be involved because of something that happened.”
But their involvement is often temporary, she said, adding, “Parents are more reactive than proactive.”
The neighborhood watch efforts that have been successful have been supported by principals, who may buy supplies like vests or even offer cash, she said.
In training sessions, Ms. Tiger-Williams told parents to look for threatening body language and other signs of trouble. Keep students moving when they come out of the building, she said. Take notes of anything suspicious and notify the school’s safety officer.
Ms. Tiger-Williams instructed parents to try to build relationships with the students passing by “because kids may come and tell you something’s going on.”
Relationships with other adults can be tricky, she said.
At a training session for parents in March, Estella Holloway said she had had to break up a fight outside her child’s school.
“It got kind of ugly; the little girl would not stop fighting,” Ms. Holloway said. An angry relative came down to the school upset that Ms. Holloway had intervened. “What do you do if a parent comes and says, ‘Why did you touch my child?’ “ Ms. Holloway asked.
Ms. Tiger-Williams said the best response was to inform the principal and let the school take it from there.
Parents are discouraged from confronting gang members or drug dealers, but they can be a deterrent.
In a gravel parking lot surrounded by boarded-up Chicago Housing Authority buildings, Marguerite Jacobs and Kenya Atkins stood at the place where students from Fenger High School are dropped off each afternoon. “We’ve been doing this since October,” Ms. Atkins said. “After Derrion.”
If there is trouble brewing, “once they see us, they stop, because they know we could get to their parents,” she said.
Ms. Leonard said she and Mr. Walker hoped to take Pain to Power’s message to Fenger High in September to mark the anniversary of Derrion’s death. They want to “talk about what happened, what we’ve learned and what we’re doing about it,” she said.
Mr. Walker said, “I don’t ever want them to stop talking about Derrion.”
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