Lake Effect News

By LORRAINE SWANSON

Editor

Students from the Mather High School Law Academy met with State Rep. John D'Amico (center, back row) at his office to advocate for more state funding for homeless youth. The law academy is one of four honors law programs currently operating in CPS neighborhood high schools.

Jazmin Espana doesn’t need much for Christmas. Neither do Mark Hanna and Maria Ardila. They just want their parents to be able to pay the rent and bills, and make do with what they already have, which they consider to be plenty.

“I usually don’t ask for things for Christmas,” Ardila says. “I spend Christmas at home with my mother and we eat. It’s not about the presents. She gets me stuff all through the year.”

The sophomores are part of the Mather High School Law Academy, a four-year honors program for students interested in law and law enforcement careers. Students learn about criminal, civil and constitutional law. They analyze what makes the criminal mind tick, hold competitive mock trials, grill guest speakers, and sometimes even get to read FBI case reports.

“The academy teaches subjects that kids love,” says Pat McAvoy, who teaches Mather’s law academy program. “What child doesn’t want to talk about guns and police? Once they get hooked, they really get into it.”

Lately, however, the law academy program has gotten personal. Moved by the testimonies of formerly homeless persons from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the Mather sophomores decided to take it up a notch.

“You don’t choose to be homeless. It can happen in the blink of an eye,” Espana says. “Stephanie came in and talked to us. She couldn’t find a job. She and her daughter went from one house to another. I never realized before the sacrifices that homeless people make. She left her daughter with a family member while she searched for a job. Now, she is in better condition and able to take care of herself and her daughter.”

Not sure what they could do to help, the Mather student decided to combine their voices into one by taking their first foray into public advocacy. They were especially concerned about homeless youth. At the end of October, Chicago Public Schools identified 9,980 students throughout the system that were homeless, compared with 8,273 at the end of October 2008, an increase of 20 percent.

Twenty students at Mather constitute that number. Homeless students throughout CPS receive extra services, such as bus passes to get to and from school, and free breakfasts and lunches. The fact there were fellow students at their own school who were homeless was a sobering thought to the law academy students. McAvoy estimates the number of homeless students at Mather is probably greater than the 20 identified by CPS.

“The problem is that they haven’t told us or they’re staying with relatives and don’t consider themselves homeless,” McAvoy says.

Even if he knew classmates that were homeless, “I wouldn’t disclose that information to you,” Hanna tells the reporter. “I don’t know anyone at school who is homeless. I could be sitting next to them in class and not even know it.”

Crafting their message, the law academy students set up a meeting with State Rep. John D’Amico (15^th District) at his Albany Park office. Their goal was to persuade D’Amico to support a 2-percent increase in the state income tax, and personalize the plight of homeless youth at Mather.

State Rep. John D'Amico, 15th District

While D’Amico understood where the students were coming from, he said he couldn’t support an income tax increase now because too many Illinois residents were struggling to pay their mortgages. Even with an increase, there would still be cuts to some human services programs.

“We did convince him of our point of view and got him thinking about the facts we gave him,” Espana says. “We got to know him better. He was very honest with us.”

D’Amico gave the students parting gifts: T-shirts and handbooks with contact information for other state lawmakers and local elected officials.

“Overall, for every politician who says we can’t do this or that because of the economy, I see as total BS,” Hanna said afterward. “Half the things from the tollways alone make a lot of money. The parking meters, where is all this money going so that we are that much in debt? That’s just policy for you.”

The students’ meeting with D’Amico didn’t discourage them, nor did it erase the images of homeless people lingering outside the West Rogers Park high school, or how close their own families have come to losing everything.

Every time she and her mother see a homeless person on the street, Ardila’s mother tells her stories about their native Columbia, where entire villages live in cardboard shacks.

“Last year, my mom had heart surgery and we couldn’t pay the rent for a few months,” Ardila says. “I see my mom working so hard to be able to give the landlord the money that she owes him. When he calls to tell us we’re still behind and threatens to kick us out, I think ‘where are we going to go?’”

While most of her students have a reasonable understanding of what a city alderman does and U.S. Congress, “it’s the state government that they really don’t have a clue about, except for [Illinois Secretary of State] Jesse White, and mainly because of his tumblers,” McAvoy says.

Still, she was impressed by how well her sophomores did in their first try at public advocacy.

“I didn’t know if they would get nervous, but they got all their points across that they had planned too,” McAvoy says. “They listend to everything D’Amico had to say and responded to him. I thought he treated them like adults. He was not condescending, but debated with them as if they were in college. He was very honest and explained his policies well. They came out understanding that there were two sides to every issue.”