We’re excited to see another high school moving to the Near West Side. The Chicago High School for the Arts seems to be a great program, but simply a bad fit for its current location.

Folks in Bronzeville are unhappy that the school has taken over two of its local elementary school buildings, and folks going to ChiArts — which pulls its students from around the city — have voiced concerns about Bronzeville’s crime.

So it seems that moving ChiArts to Malcolm X’s old building when the college moves out in 2015 is a win-win deal. Bronzeville folks will get their freshly renovated Doolittle Elementary buildings back, and ChiArts students will get a safer location that’s centrally located and easier to get to.

The new arts campus that’ll spring up in Malcolm X’s old building could become a national model for cooperation between education groups and local nonprofits. Sharing the space at Malcolm X will benefit everyone involved — and there should be plenty of it to share. The community it’ll foster could be a great one.

We’re unsure, though, why the city is pulling this deal in the first place. Why exactly was the old Malcolm X building not good enough for the college again? Building a $251 million new complex next door seems a bit silly, if the old building is still fit for occupancy. There better be some top-notch medical training facilities in the new building.

Don’t think, also, that this is a new neighborhood school. This school prides itself on taking students from all around the city, so Near West Side students may not get a bigger bite of the apple.

Nevertheless, a prominent school like this can only serve to enhance the neighborhood. We look forward to 2015.

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By Harold L. Lucas from Bronzeville
Posted: 04/12/2012 12:36 PM

The deeper question is what are we going to do about abating youth violence through effective civic engagement? Currently on the corner of 35th & Martin Luther King Drive at the gateway to the proposed Black Metropolis National Heritage Area, when the students from area schools including Chi Arts Academy, Dunbar High School and the Bronzeville Military Academy are dismissed from their respectives schools, a riot /cultural clash is subject to occur if there is not strong police security.