As School Year Approaches, South Side Students ‘Sick Of Waiting’ For Peace Room Partnerships

WOODLAWN — Students in Woodlawn are advocating to bring back community groups that helped develop a “peace room” at their high school — while kids at a nearby elementary school are pushing to open a room of their own.

Hyde Park Academy, 6220 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn, for several years hosted a dedicated room for restorative justice sessions, advocacy trainings and conversations about student life in partnership with community organizations Southside Together and GoodKids MadCity.

Southside Together staffed and paid for programs in the peace room, organizers said. The room was created in 2021 using funds freed up by the local school council’s removal of one on-campus police officer.

Hyde Park Academy administrators abruptly ended partnerships with the community groups in May, as the partnerships no longer aligned “with the specific needs of the school community,” Chicago Public Schools officials said at the time.

Since then, students and organizers pushing to restore the partnerships say the room has existed in name only, without the programs that established it as a needed “safe space” at Hyde Park Academy. That safe space was especially needed last school year, when three classmates were killed in crashes and a shooting, they said.

A full-strength peace room was, “oftentimes, [students’] only reason to come to school,” senior Ayanna Jackson said during a rally Tuesday at First Presbyterian Church, 6420 S. Kimbark Ave. in Woodlawn.

“Without a peace room and many other resources, our school will continue to decline,” Jackson told a few dozen supporters at the rally.

In attendance Tuesday was Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th), who said he supports the push to restore the peace room partnerships and to create another peace room at Parkside S.T.E.A.M. Community Academy in South Shore.

“These young people need more, they’ve asked for more, and I think it’s important for us to make sure that they get it,” Yancy said.

One Hyde Park alumnus on Tuesday voiced confusion about the status of the high school’s peace room, as school administrators have asserted that the room remains open, she said.

The peace room was open at the end of the last school year, CPS spokesperson Sylvia Barragan told Block Club in May. Students and organizers confirmed the room remained open once the partnerships ended, but said it lacked any resources or support from the outside staffers who helped create and develop the room.

Ozzman “Oz” Dumas, a Woodlawn resident who attended this week’s rally to learn more about the students’ campaign, compared a peace room without dedicated staff or programs to a bathroom with no toilets.

If administrators won’t renew partnerships with Southside Together and GoodKids MadCity, “there has to be a reasonable replacement” of trauma-informed, civically active staff, Dumas said.

“You want somewhere for your kids to release that energy [in a way] that’s not fighting, that’s not outside being destructive,” said Dumas, who does not have children attending Hyde Park Academy. “If you’re not going to allow the organization back in, you might want to at least consider hiring somebody from the organization to lead” the peace room.

District spokespeople did not immediately respond to Block Club’s questions regarding the peace room’s future and whether the community groups are active vendors for the upcoming school year.

Organizers recruited rally attendees to speak in support of restoring the partnerships at Thursday’s school board meeting.

While Hyde Park Academy students push to restore their peace room partnerships, kids at Parkside Academy in South Shore are organizing for their own peace room.

In the works for a year, and with preliminary approval from school administrators, students want to implement the room for the upcoming school year, they said.

A spare room was identified for the peace room, but it ended up as a rarely used tutoring room last year, sixth-grader Zyria said following the rally.

“What I heard was that, since there was a peace room at Hyde Park, it made some of the students’ attitudes better,” Zyria told Block Club. “We agreed with it. We felt that’s a good idea that our school really needed, because [students] have got anger issues.”

Other Parkside students on Tuesday spoke to the struggles kids face in controlling their emotions at school, as well as the frequent fights that result.

A peace room would allow students a “sanctuary” where they can calm down and express themselves freely, preventing their emotions from escalating in tense situations, they said.

“A peace room is definitely a place for students can go to take advantage of [and] learn how to process their emotions,” said Mikajie, an incoming freshman and recent Parkside graduate. “We’re sick of waiting. We want action.”