Same street, different day.

On Tuesday night at 10pm another boy was killed in Chicago. Sixteen years old. His name hasn't been released yet.

This is two blocks from the school where I teach. This was two hours after I released my players from practice, some to walk down the very same street.

Two days earlier another boy was killed a few more blocks away. This one 13 years old. The trigger finger belonged to another boy, 18. Another one lost in Chicago. No one appeared on his behalf. A few blocks away another boy, this one 20, shot. Wednesday night.

Reconcile that reality with this reality. Today, 68 students from our school in the middle of this received acceptance letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Three others have won Posse Scholarships. Another, Yale.

On the night of one of the murders, my team of 58 high school boys and girls were running their asses off in the locker-lined hallways, training and preparing for an ultimate frisbee season that is more than a month away.  They will mostly compete against affluent suburban kids whose background din of neighborhood noise somehow neglects to include shots fired and bodies falling.

What do you make of this? What can you make of this?

These are the same streets. The same kids in so many ways. Different days.

Put yourself in the shoes of a freshman boy at my school. You're 13 years old. Which narrative do you choose to internalize?

Will you be one who makes it to college? Or, one who is covered in a blue tarp in an alley, name still not released almost a week later?

What do people outside your community believe will happen to you?

What do people inside your community believe?

What do you believe?

Same street, different day?

I've taught at this school for five years now. Some things in the neighborhood have changed. Some haven't.

The GiGi's peep show and porn corner store has closed, making way for a cheap furniture spot to serve as backdrop for the bus stop. Progress.

On the front stoops and porches that line the one-way streets around the school a few new flags have started to hang.  In between the colors of Puerto Rico and Mexico hang Bradley University red, Illinois orange and blue. Progress.

Still, this week in an alley a block away, under a blue tarp, a 16 year old kid laid dead. Name still not released. Adding to a cacophonous din of doubt, filling the minds of my students who might not yet believe. They might not yet believe that theirs will be a porch with a university flag and not the drawn shades of another mother who lost a boy to Chicago.

Chicagoans don't care about @ChiPubSchools: On #LSC elections, apathy and a challenge to do more

Headline of recent DNA Info story.

Chicagoans don't care about their local schools.

Is that the issue? Apathy? Is that why only 700 people have thus far signed up for 6,000 potential elected Local School Council seats? Or, is there something more...

Certainly more individuals will sign up as we approach the Feb 26th deadline, but a look at the results from the last election doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

McAuliffe elementary's results are pictured below, in a school with more than 650 students the leading vote getter walked away with 15. This is one of dozens of examples, click around on this map, attempt not to be depressed.

Check out other results here.

Now, maybe LSC races aren't the sexiest elected positions in the world - they don't set taxes, they don't pass laws, they don't control district budgets. But, they do hire and control principal contracts - a wildly important role for the success of a school. They do approve budgets. They can become active and help to set policy and vision for a school.

The initial conception of the LSC during the Harold Washington years in Chicago was to return schools to local control after years of a recalcitrant board entirely controlled by the elder Mayor Daley that was unresponsive to the needs to smaller communities. In the first election more than 17,000 people ran for 6,000 slots. LSCs were a resounding success.

So, why are so few people interested in running now? Is it apathy?

Dave Meslin has an eloquent take on this in his 2010 TEDx talk. The basic argument: if your design doesn't call on people to engage, they won't. My argument, right now Chicago Public Schools is not calling on Chicagoans to engage - so, they aren't.

I mean LOOK at this beauty, don't you just want to jump off your couch and get involved right now?? 

That's right folks, if you are interested in becoming involved in your local school you only need to search through 24 hard copy .pdfs, print them out, read them all, and physically walk or mail them to a designated office. At that point, someone will maybe get back to you in a few days.

Sarcasm aside, what would an actual, earnest, well-run campaign to engage communities in schools look like?

So, a challenge to graphic designers, public relations professionals, mad men - reimagine this call to action. 

And further a challenge to Chicagoans, if you care about your city, if you care about the future for children of our city at an absolute bare minimum, go vote in your LSC elections on April 7th and 8th. 

The educated citizen has an obligation to serve the public. He may be a precinct worker or President. He may give his talents at the courthouse, the State house, the White House. He may be a civil servant or a Senator, a candidate or a campaign worker, a winner or a loser. But he must be a participant and not a spectator. 

- President Kennedy, May 18th 1963