Colbert: The decline of enrollment of Chicago schools

Recently, mention was made in this column about 1A boys basketball champ Chicago Marshall declining in enrollment from over 1,000 students to under 200. In examining this further, there was a time when Marshall had over 5,000 students in its high school.

That was the 1960s, when schools all over Illinois were bursting at the seams with the Baby Boom generation. But, how does a school go from over 5,000 to under 200 in a few short decades?

And, it isn’t just Marshall. Public schools throughout Chicago have dramatically declined, such as another former basketball state champ, 1973 Class AA Hirsch, who is teetering at 100 total enrollment.

In the last decade, about 70,000 students have been lost to Chicago public schools partially due to residents moving away, lower birth rates and charter schools.

Ironically, 230 new schools were built from 1995-2015, as growth was forecasted. With that master plan backfiring, 49 schools were closed and many others now have 20-30 percent occupancy, with over 300 deemed underutilized.

It’s a mess with solutions hard to come by.

Out here in rural Illinois, we know how much an anchor a school is to the community and the effects its closure can have. Pockets of Chicago are being affected in the same way.

With Marshall winning the IHSA state finals, it’s easy to bemoan the fact it was a school from a city of 2.7 million against Goreville, population 1,164. That’s not really the case.

Sure, they get a higher proportion of basketball players per capita among its 186 students, but Marshall has its own internal struggles to put a team on the floor.

Something else periodically mentioned in this column has been the lack of interest in the state basketball tournament since the glory days of the 1950s through the 1970s in a 1-class system.

Chicago Marshall was a major player in this time span, starting with a 1958 championship game win over a Rock Falls team led by Kenny Siebel and Gary Kolb, 70-64.

However, it was a 1966 loss by Marshall in the super-sectionals that had a bigger societal impact.

The year before, Marshall defeated New Trier in the super-sectional to advance downstate. The two teams met in a rematch at McGraw Hall in Northwestern in 1966 and a more experienced New Trier team pulled away in the fourth quarter for an emotionally-charged win, as fights broke out among fans as the buzzer sounded.

As one player said years later, it was like two different universes.

There was the game itself between a predominately white New Trier versus predominately black Marshall, where color didn’t matter. Then there was a universe of a packed house at McGraw Hall, with privileged whites sitting on one side of the gym and impoverished blacks on the other side. Racial disparity interfered in this universe and animosity reared it ugly head.

The situation was so bad, that players were quickly rushed into their locker rooms to avoid the fracas, in which arrests were made and police injured. One must remember that in the mid-1960s racial tensions were bubbling up all over the country and sports could be a vehicle for such a display, from raised black fists on the Olympics medals stand to a skirmish between fans at a basketball game.

The alternate universe of the 1966 game on the court between Marshall and New Trier resulted in the Trevians making the coveted trip to a sold-out Assembly Hall in Champaign, where rabid fans from all over Illinois saw them lose to eventual champ Harvey Thornton in the quarterfinals.

Still, it was a rewarding experience to make it that far, just as Marshall did the year before. However, there was never a chance for Marshall or New Trier players to exchange greetings and handshakes after the 1966 super-sectional game because of the quick exits off the court.

It wasn’t until 2016 that members of both teams were brought together to finally embrace and shake one another’s hands. It was also time for remembrance and reflection of a turbulent time period and a game that stood apart from it, a game they watched together on old eight-millimeter film rescued from someone’s attic.

No matter the skin color, we can find a common ground with sports, especially when it is a shared experience from our youths.

No longer kids, but adults whose past intersected in such a unique manner, I imagine those gentlemen meeting again for the first time in 50 years didn’t see each other as black or white, but only as fellow competitors desperate for a trip downstate and, of course, bragging rights.