New Maya Angelou Elementary School facility brings hope for local economic growth

This report was made possible by the National Association of Black Journalists and Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Black Press Grant program.

Arletha Bolton-Luster attended Maya Angelou Elementary School, then Emerson Elementary, when she was growing up in the 1970s. Now her son attends, but the building remained nearly untouched from her tiny tot days at 157th Street and Page Avenue.

“The nostalgia smacked me in the face. It looked the same as it did when I went but, as a parent and community member, I think people need a new facility,” Bolton-Luster said. “It even had that same smell of ditto machine ink and distinct gym scent. It wasn’t a bad smell, just the education smell. It’ll be nice to have that new car smell.”

While the school itself looked the same, some elements of the Maya Angelou experience are not what it once was, she said. “When I went to school, every single house in that neighborhood was [occupied] — there was not an abandoned home. Now my son walks out of the school to see every other house being abandoned,” she said. “That wasn't what I experienced growing up in Harvey.”

Thanks to an influx of federal funding and several local development projects, that may soon change.

Harvey School District 152 is building a more contemporary facility for Maya Angelou Elementary School families. Now, school administrators, parents and business advocates have their eyes set on using the renovations and addendum as an opportunity to not only enhance Harvey’s educational offerings but bolster economic growth.

The district had its eyes on giving the school, built in the 1940s, a facelift for several years and tried bringing the project to life before the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, said Bolton-Luster, who also serves as community education manager at D152. Maya Angelou Principal Juli Mahorney said these efforts were met with financial challenges solved by the district receiving nearly $22 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds.

The new school is a roughly $7 million investment, according to a funding plan by the district’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund committee. Maya Angelou families were relocated to the vacant Carl Sandburg Elementary School five miles north while the project is underway.

South Holland-based JMA Architects and Mokena-based Grilli Construction, which led school renovations in Chicago Heights and Kankakee, are architects on the project. They are joined by CMM Group, based in nearby Lansing.

For Bolton-Luster, there’s hope that the new school will serve as a symbol of better things to come for these young Harvey residents, that “Harvey is going to get better for them.”

The view from Page and Wood

The district officially broke ground on the new project in October of 2022, after performing an asbestos abatement. The new building, to be constructed on the same site along Page Avenue and adjacent Wood Street, will sit down the street from UChicago Ingalls Memorial Hospital, the city’s largest private employer. Vacant lots and post-World War II single family homes—some populated, some abandoned—surround the school.

An economic jolt could go a long way.

Mahorney said she saw that happen when a new addition was added to Holmes Elementary School roughly a decade ago. She said the new addition created opportunities for community organizations to gather and create relationships with the school.

The area is seeing projects, in addition to the Maya Angelou Elementary School rebuild, that point in the direction of economic improvement. Last fall, the Illinois Department of Transportation broke ground on the reconstruction of Wood Street and Ashland Avenue—a $94 million overhaul of a largely industrial corridor that connects Harvey, Riverdale, and Dixmoor.

Most of that reconstruction will take place in Harvey. Commuters can expect renovations made along a three-mile stretch of Wood between 138th and 161st Streets. The city’s main sewer line, which runs through Wood, will be replaced.

Other facelifts include a completely rebuilt four-lane road, modernized traffic signals and turn lanes, new curbs, gutters, lighting, and even bike and pedestrian lanes.

“​​This project in the south suburbs gets right at the heart of a major throughway for the community: Wood Street and Ashland Avenue,” Governor J.B. Pritzker said. “In Illinois, we know when we invest in infrastructure, we open doors for our residents. But this isn’t just an investment in our infrastructure – it’s an investment in communities like Dixmoor, Riverdale and Harvey.”

The Governor’s Office said the road was built in the 1930s but was never constructed with the “original pavement still serving as the roadway’s (foundation) in some locations.” The Wood Street project’s anticipated completion is in 2025.

A’ndrea Paxton, co-founder and director of the Harvey Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Wood Street project is crucial to the neighborhood’s development and is optimistic that something economically good could come out of it.

“[If] these types of developments are packaged and planned correctly, including plumbing and sewer infrastructure, businesses and residents could tremendously benefit,” Paxton said. “It also spearheads numerous other side street corridor developments in the area.”

UChicago Ingalls is seeking to redevelop the area around the hospital and has been seeking community input on that forthcoming effort. Alex’s Butcher, a small-scale meat market, opened its doors to Harvey residents a mere two blocks south of the school.

‘Distractions’

Mahorney said the old building posed educational challenges because it didn’t offer enough space for STEM, physical education and arts-related activities. The new building, expected to open next school year, will be structured very similarly to the old building but will include a STEM lab, a gymnasium and separate music and art classrooms, according to Mahorney.

She said this will increase gym classes and extracurricular offerings. The old building’s forced the gym and cafeteria to occupy the same space, creating a scheduling dilemma.

Lunch requires time to set-up, eat and clean-up so the school couldn’t offer gym courses for a few hours each day, Mahorney said. She also said the STEM lab’s added space will provide new hands-on learning opportunities for students.

“I was talking to a teacher who said she has drones but the size of the old building’s classroom makes it hard for us to use the drones,” Mahorney said. “But next year, we'll have space we can use so students can spread out on the floor and work with some activities to help them understand mechanics and things like that.”

These space-related challenges continued after the school day concluded. Mahorney said the school’s basketball team practices at the same time as the cheerleading team; typically both these activities would be held in a gym.

A new, separate gym will provide more space for multiple extracurricular activities to be conveniently held at the same time. She said the space limitations also made it difficult for the school to host and foster relationships with outside community organizations. Mahorney said her space concerns were also joined by facility maintenance issues.

“The heating systems were very old and while the district was responsive to them, it still caused some concerns about the temperatures being either too hot or too cold,” she said. “We had a situation where water was pooling in front of the building so it was hard for students to exit without getting wet and everything. Tiles were also coming apart.”

“Whenever there are distractions—and most of these things caused classroom distractions—you're taking time away from student learning.”