What if Shedd School had closed 30 years earlier?

During the past week I spoke with Mr. John McCormick. He was the former principal of this blog''s namesake school in addition to its sister at Bennett School. It was an interesting chat not only about the status of Shedd, his career and how he started in the education field, also his time as Bennett-Shedd's principal from 1984 to 1995.

Shedd was a school he said could run itself with a student population of at least 180 students. It was certainly different from Bennett School which had a student population of 600 and for an administrator who was in charge of two buildings or campuses the larger school would draw you in. The challenges of running two schools essentially even if philosophically they were really one school was mainly communication. Especially on those times when you might be at one school say Bennett, but there are situations where you had to drop everything and go to Shedd to address a situation.

With this being said we'll share more of what was shared between Mr. McCormick and myself during our conversation. I did want to share with you something that really rocked my world and could only cause me to wonder how different my childhood would've been if it happened.

Shedd School has been closed since 2013. What if Shedd had been closed in the late 1980s? According to Mr. McCormick the possibility was there. The reasoning wasn't much different that the decision to close 50 schools back in 2013. Perhaps concerns over underutilization and certainly concerns over demographics. One solution that helped keep Shedd open was to expand the attendance boundaries. Although any students from outside of the middle class neighborhood of Roseland Heights didn't always transfer to Bennett School at least the infusion of students outside of the neighborhood allowed the Shedd branch to remain open.

We both agree that hopefully the former Shedd School building will find a use within the neighborhood at some point in the future. When I heard things I've heard that Chicago State University was interested, and a private school was also interested. So far not a whole lot of movement on the building though if I learn of anything new I will share that with you all.

Unfortunately if one attends a meeting of Ward 9 Alderman Anthony Beale you might hear a member of the community call for Shedd's reopening. Unfortunately it's probably not likely usually the current answer is that the demographics doesn't justify Shedd's reopening. Once a decision is made to close a school it will be exceedingly difficult to get it reopened. Right now a small neighborhood school remains closed for the foreseeable future as the property waits for a new use.

Hopefully in the near future, I will share more about my conversation with former Bennett-Shedd Principal McCormick.