Mayoral candidate Gery Chico has an admirable idea with building new centers to watch popular high school basketball games. A more profitable – and productive – idea for high schoolers may be to expand the current model instead.
With the
once-in-a-generation opportunity to fill the mayor’s post with a new leader,
many of the leading candidates for mayor of Chicago are going to bring to the
table visionary ideas that are supposed to capture our imagination. Gery Chico’s
idea to have Chicago Public Schools build two or three premier “competition
centers” around the city to house popular high school basketball games is one
of those ideas, a proposal that could bring about building projects for
unemployed construction workers and community centers where our youth’s talents
can be displayed.
For all of the good that
could come out of a visionary plan from this mayoral candidate, how about a
plan that gives vision to the high school students that his proposal would
touch?
The idea for the series
of mini-complexes around the city for these games sprung from a complaint about
having a recent game between Morgan Park and Simeon High Schools that had to be
played on the campus of Chicago State University due to space accommodations.
The extra space at new facilities would suit the fans of these events very
well, but the current arrangements – perhaps in an expanded fashion – would be
the best-suited plan for these fans instead, especially considering that many
of these spectators are themselves students.
Bringing popular games
such as the recent Morgan Park-Simeon tussle to local college campuses is not a
problem and, hopefully, the next mayor of Chicago – a person that currently has
the power to appoint those that run Chicago Public Schools – understands that
building a vision for the future is a lot more meaningful than building a
structure for future games.
More CPS students and
student-athletes need regular exposure to college environments and other
experiences that will foster a vision of successful lives after high school.
Rather than spending millions to invest in the same construction company allies
that will most likely win the contracts to build these “competition centers”,
the true investment should be made in a highly impactful (and likely less
fiscally-harmful) way by forging lasting partnerships between the local
colleges and universities and CPS in order to regularly bring some of these
popular games to their campuses. Subsequently, the schools can plan to
regularly show off their digs to prospective college students in a
non-pressurized environment that, with a sense of regularity over the course of
2-4 years of visits, can foster the belief within more of our high school students
that college and advanced education career paths are real options for them. Exposure
builds familiarity. Familiarity breeds confidence – and vision. Those two
aspects create real dreams – and plans to obtain those goals.
The payoff with an
expanded base of college-educated Chicagoans is bigger than the windfall of
debt for the city that would be likely experienced with the building of the
arenas within the next several years. Increasing the overall educational levels
of our youth – particularly those in high-risk areas – will eventually have an
inverse impact on the crime, family ills, and hopelessness that traps many of
our youth in cycles of poverty and despair. Putting these games in new gyms puts our best athletes on
shiny-new pedestals. Keeping these games on college campuses with a vision to
optimize the chance to show more students that college is a real option for
their careers puts our students on the road to increased prosperity, safety,
and happiness.
With the drop-out rates
at crisis level within CPS at this time, the noble vision of building “competition
centers” may be a fun idea, but it also represents the unspoken and harmful
message that the teenage years are supposed to be the apex of their young
lives, captivated by living out hoop dreams in state-of-the-art new
mini-arenas. Instead, the best idea centers on reminding our students regularly
that the best within them and for them is beyond the current reality that they
see daily. We can dribble our way to championship varsity games in new gyms,
but without passing on a vision of what matters in the game of life, we are
truly only doing nothing but dropping the ball.
Lenny McAllister is a syndicated political commentator and the host
of “Launching Chicago with Lenny McAllister” on The Talk of Chicago 1690 AM
WVON (www.wvon.com). He will be on “Our World with Black Enterprise”
this weekend; (check local listings for details on air times) He is the author
of the upcoming edition of the book, “The Obama Era, Part I (2008-2010):
Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative).” Follow him at www.twitter.com/lennyhhr and on Facebook at www.tinyurl.com/lennyfacebook .
