OLD TOWN — The eighth-graders at Manierre Elementary are going on their spring college trip.
Old Town resident Dennis Hauser, who set up a GoFundMe page for the school, said it "blew past" the $1,200 needed to meet a Wednesday deadline for payment for the trip. As of Wednesday, it was also closing in on the larger $25,000 goal set to pay not only for the trip, but for school supplies and other programs.
It will also allow the 25 students making the trip and 10 school staffers to pay for side visits to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the World War II Museum in New Orleans as they embark on their most ambitious spring trip yet in the third year of the program, "so the kids take advantage of everything they can academically," Principal Derrick Orr said.
Beginning April 1, they'll be traveling for a week to Los Angeles, New Orleans and Miami, making stops at universities and major cultural attractions to give students a taste of what's out there for them if they continue their studies through high school and beyond.
Orr said the annual college trip grew out of the school's turnaround after it received an 11th-hour reprieve when threatened with closure by Chicago Public Schools four years ago. Teachers and staff rededicated themselves, he added, and began improving academic achievement to the point where the school is now on the verge of being considered in "good standing" with CPS.
But it wasn't translating to the students going on to graduate from high school.
"Somehow we were missing the goal," Orr said Tuesday. "Between here and going off to high school, they were winding up on the streets."
Orr cited how 99 percent of the students at the school, at 1420 N. Hudson Ave., are low-income, with many coming from the Marshall Field Garden Apartments across the street. The college trip is in lieu of what many might consider the conventional eighth-grade Washington, D.C., trip, which most Manierre students couldn't afford in any case.
"If you look outside the school, there are people walking around and probably selling drugs or doing things that are negative," Orr said. "If our kids are not committed to wanting to go to college, then they're going to be thrown to the streets."
As the school made academic progress, Orr said, the faculty began to focus more on making sure that translated into real-life issues. He insisted the story was not about him, but the teachers, with all agreeing, "We've got to be able to do something. We've got to be able to put together a plan. Maybe if we get them more interested in college at an eighth-grade level."
Thus the spring college trip, now in its third year, and Orr said he's already seen the results.
"When we went to Howard and Morehouse and Spellman, I saw the kids' eyes light up," he said. "They were saying, 'I want to go, I want to go.' So now they are able to come back to the community and tell their friends, 'Man, that college trip was wonderful.'
"We need to make that statement every year," Orr added. "It's not just a one-year thing. We're trying to change the culture, make it the norm."
Orr said he had the pleasure of telling one eighth-grader Tuesday that a spot had come open and he was going on the trip.
"He ran through the hallways yelling and screaming," Orr said. "You'd have thought it was graduation day."
