Ten years ago, when she was 18, Kimberly Johnson got kicked out of high school for fighting in the hallway and was left on her own to figure out what comes next for a teenager without a diploma.
The City Colleges board, Johnson counters, is being unrealistic. “They don’t understand the consequences of what they’re doing,” she says. “They’re abandoning thousands of students and leaving them without hope. Now there’s no place for dropouts to get their high school diplomas. If you make one mistake you’re going to pay for it for the rest of your life.”
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After her expulsion she bounced around from an alternative high school to a GED class to a school that offered instruction in how to be an EKG technician. “I was drifting. Nothing was working out,” Johnson says. “The high school was filled with gangbangers. The GED class was too slow, it wasn’t challenging. I got my certificate as an EKG technician, but without a high school diploma I couldn’t get a job.”
A friend told her about the City Colleges evening school program, and in 1994 she enrolled, taking courses at Jones Commercial High School and at Dawson Junior College. “It was great,” says Johnson. “The classes were at night, so you could work in the day. They were at high schools or colleges across the city, so anyone could get to them. It changed my life. It made me feel my life was heading in the right direction.”
“Money was not the reason we cut the [evening high school] program. It’s an issue of our mission,” says Matthews. “It’s a program that we got involved with in the 70s and it should be run by the public schools. Enrollment peaked at 12,000 in the early 1980s and it was about 2,000 in 1994. I think enrollment fell because students were disappointed with the performance.”
In late May she testified before the City Council’s education subcommittee in a hearing regarding Gidwitz’s reappointment to the board. “Gidwitz was sitting right behind me, but I testified against him,” says Johnson. “There I was, a girl out of the projects, and he’s a millionaire. I told the aldermen, “He may be a great businessman, but you can’t be ruthless when you’re running a college. This isn’t about takeovers and buyouts. This is education–you’re playing with people’s lives.”‘
A few weeks ago, Lohr discovered the signs had been removed. “I called the CTA and they told me their law department had advised them to take the signs down,” says Lohr. “I think they took them down because expediency is more important than the health of the people.”
