Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Englewood STEM High School Debuts After Four School Closures

  • By Yvonne Marquez
  • 09/03/19

Englewood STEM High School in Chicago is open this week after the district closed down four high schools due to lack of academic achievement and under enrollment of students. Over the past decade the schools — Hope, Harper, TEAM and Robeson — experienced a 70%-85% declines in student enrollment, reported the Chicago Tribune.

The $85 million neighborhood school is brightly lit, with lots of windows and features colorful murals and inspirational words on the walls that integrates STEM symbols with traditional West African art patterns.

The new three-story building was built on the grounds of the former Robeson campus which closed in 2018. More than 400 students are registered to start the school year and nearly all students are African American. In addition, 88% of students are low-income and 22% are “diverse learners,” meaning they have different learning needs.

The $85 million neighborhood school is brightly lit, with lots of windows and features colorful murals and inspirational words on the walls that integrates STEM symbols with traditional West African art patterns.  

“One of the things that we were really adamant about was the power of images, and how images play in how people see themselves,” Principal Conrad Timbers-Ausar told the Chicago Sun-Times. “There’s some images that we wanted to have as students and families come to the school that they can see themselves doing different things throughout the building.”

Englewood STEM, which is the first new school to be built since the 1970s in the neighborhood, has an on-site health clinic on the first floor that’s open to students, staff and the community. Chicago Public Schools calls the classrooms in the high school as “world-class multipurpose educational spaces” where students will focus on science, technology, engineering and math. The gym/auditorium seats about 800 and the grounds feature an athletic facility with a baseball diamond and football field.

The school’s mascot is the panthers, which was chosen by community vote and inspired by the blockbuster film “Black Panther.”

About the Author

Yvonne Marquez is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • NWEA Report Recommends K–12 Natural Disaster Recovery Strategies

    The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a K–12 assessment and research organization, recently announced the release of a new playbook for schools and communities recovering from extreme weather events, according to a news release.

  • Image courtesy of Kahler Slater

    UW–Madison Announces Completion of Morgridge Hall

    The University of Wisconsin–Madison recently announced that construction is complete on Morgridge Hall, a new academic building, according to a news release. The facility opened September 3 at the start of the fall semester, consolidating the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences into a single facility for the first time.

  • Spaces4Learning Trends & Predictions for Educational Facilities in 2026: Part I

    We asked, you answered, and the results are in! Last year, we put out a call for submissions to collect our readership’s opinion on trends and predictions for K–12 and higher education facilities in 2026.