Friday, March 4, 2005

* King Killa Removed From Field School

Broken Circle Removed Too
Playground11
On Wednesday afternoon, I visited Field School again. I hoped the Alderman's office would have kicked in and done something about the gang turf war graffiti on school grounds. After all, it was Joe, who cleaned up Morse Avenue with all those inspections and inspectors , it's was Joe who got the camera installed. It was Joe who built the new Field School on Clark and Morse, right? Not to mention it's his job he is paid to do, he makes $100,000 a year to take care of these matters.

He is the ward boss, the head honcho, the big cheese and he and his staff were warned on Monday about this issue. I emailed him and his staff. He must have decided to ignore the gang graffiti on the school grounds hoping it would go away by itself ?

It didn't go away so I decided to help, that's what our Morse Hell Hole mouthpiece for the Alderman, Michael C. said to do. Michael C. said "Go bug CPS"! So I did, that's what a pest like me does.

This took a little more volunteer effort than I thought, but I still got quick results. First thing I had to do was weasle my way inside the school. I wanted to find out why nothing is being done... why no-one but Margot and I cared.

Field School is home to some 640 students, students who speak fourteen different languages. Field School teaches 4th through 8th grades and the school's mascot is the bulldog. As for the school colors... they are blue and white. Ms. Cora Suddoth is the school's principal.

My experience began at the 7019 N. Ashland side... but that door was locked. After being routed to the real main entrance on the Lunt Avenue side...after being told to empty my pockets, I was routed through a metal detector machine, the machine didn't make a sound. I was then told to pick up my stuff and was pointed to the office, upstairs and on the left.

I got inside the office just as a administrator was announcing a Lock Down over the intercom/loudspeaker system. I thought to myself, "did I just walk into a prison"?

After the dust settled, an administrator listened to the gang graffiti story, nodding her head from time to time. At first she denied any gang graffiti was even on the playground, shaking her head no. She said the school didn't hear anything from the Aldermans office, everyone would have heard about that, she didn't hear anything from a teacher...nor a janitor...not even one student. Not even our own Michael C.

She just kept shaking her head in disbelief." Was I speaking the unknown fifteenth langauge"? I asked her if she didn't believe me to follow me down and take a look for herself. But she couldn't do that, we were under lock down and it was cold outside.

She said," some graffiti was removed about a month ago and said the principal would look into it". "If there was any graffiti there, it would be removed." She thanked me for noticing and bringing it to the schools attention. She took the website address for review.

As I left, I activated the metal detector because my camera was in my pocket, wow, the machine worked! Still not quite finished, later in the day faxed a copy of the story to the school and downtown. I figured if this didn't work, I was resigned to removing the crap myself.
Playground_15
By Thursday afternoon the Graffiti Busters moved in and cleaned the school up. They took out the broken plexi-glass circle but couldn't quite fix the broken tic-tac toe - number five and left the half moon shaped, pink thingy. Alderman Moore could you look into this or do I have to do this too?

2 comments:

Toni said...

Amazing the school was unaware. Don't they still have teachers taking turns supervising the playgrounds in Chicago? They should have graffiti remover in their budget. Most schools suffer from these wannabe artists but once a month removal isn't good enough. That's 4 weeks to send messages of hate.

Hopefully this administrator will put graffiti check on a daily calendar.

Jocelyn said...

That is awesome- you rock.
You know what I noticed yesterday to my chagrin? The new CTA roof at Morse L is leaking in the same place as before! The brand new boards they put in are getting leaked on again. I am calling the alderman's office about this, unless you have a better idea?

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