By Monét Witherspoon
Let The Little Light Shine by Kevin Shaw documents the largest mass school closing in America's history, which took place in 2013.
Kevin Shaw’s documentary presented the country’s largest series of mass school closings. He focused on one school, National Teachers Academy (NTA), a K-8 school located in southern Chicago. The film presented NTA as a high-achieving, resource-filled, and community-oriented school. The film also shed light on the gentrification in South Chicago. The tight-knit community was illustrated through kids rallying together and interrupting board meetings, or the eighth graders telling their friends about their kindergarten crushes. He also painted the camaraderie within the community by focusing on faculty members who tell the school’s history and discuss the faculty-student relationships. As an example the documentary showcases a younger girl, Yaa, a 5th grader, and her social anxiety. She regularly visits the principal, Isaac Castelaz, and the principal helps her with her communication and social skills, despite current priorities. Yaa also speaks on her growth with the help of her principal as well as how appreciative and trustful of him she is.
NTA is a very high-performing school with a strong sense of community, yet Chicago Public Schools (CPS) wanted to shut them down. CPS wanted to build a high school and close down NTA, but for what reason? The answer: they wanted to build a bigger school that was going to house more students in the classroom. Parents had the option to send their children to NTA, however, they chose not to. The other elementary school is about 1.2 miles down the road and it was overpopulated. Why did parents continue to send their children to an overcrowded school when NTA is another viable option? What's wrong with NTA? With NTA being one of the few level 1+ schools in Chicago, which is achieved by high standardized test scores and comparison to other Chicago public schools, it’s understandable to be confused about why it’s neglected when compared to the overpopulated elementary school down the street. During a parent meeting, a white woman, an NTA parent, talked about how her friends often question her about sending her kids to NTA with “those people''. Shaw and Greer questioned how those who speak poorly about NTA and their community are the same people who've never been to NTA to their community. Why do they know it's so bad? The only difference between these two schools is that NTA is made up of about 99% minorities: mainly black and Latinx students. Considering the previous information it's hard not to believe the only reason CPS wants to close down the school is due to racist beliefs, and the idea that Elisabeth Greer brings up, “a black classroom can’t be a viable one”. All of these are viable pieces of evidence, proving that the closing of this school is an act of gentrification, “the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.”
Pictured to the right is Ms.Elisabeth Greer, a community organizer.
This was a position that she never imagined she’d find herself in. When Shaw introduces Greer, in the after-film Q & A, he reveals that they went to elementary school together. She was usually very laid back, quiet, and shy, and he too mentions how it was a surprise to see her taking such a leadership role. Later in life, however, they reconnected over social media. One night, while scrolling on his feed, he saw what was going on in her community. They talked and an idea was born. As a director and a South Chicago citizen, Shaw felt as if this was something he had to document.
Throughout the fight against CPS, Greer is constantly on the front lines and speaking her truth. Alongside her opinion on the black student stigma, she proposed another question: where is this money coming from to build a new school? This is the same money, if not more, that NTA has asked for and the same money that could be used for their school.
Eventually, NTA took the board of education of South Chicago to court and was granted an appeal meaning they could sue CPS. While celebrating, the community gets the news that CPS is deciding to change its plans and no longer build a new school or destroy NTA. While this was a battle for the security of the NTA community, it was bigger than just the NTA. By being the only school to prevent closing, and being a survivor of the mass gentrification, their actions made a big statement.
Although NTA won the war, they lost a lot of battles along the way, which resulted in lots of emotional trauma and baggage. There is a sort of trauma that can be compared to PTSD Ms.Greer describes it, “I can’t believe we had to do that- I can’t believe we had to fight that hard for something that shouldn’t even be an issue.”
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