Most Cook juvenile center residents still out of class

It's been nine months.

Still, three-fourths of the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center's 450 residents remain out of class.

The Nancy B. Jefferson School in the center for young offenders has been in a sort of limbo since a February fracas injured 16 youths and 10 staffers.

Immediately afterward, Transitional Administrator Earl Dunlap shut down the school indefinitely, until safety concerns could be resolved.

"It's been frustrating," said Benjamin Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents the center's residents.

"We were hoping by this fall that we'd have all the kids back (at the school). We're not there yet."

Wolf pinned the slow progress on several factors.

With 175 staff vacancies at the center and dozens of other staff members on medical or family leave, Dunlap in April asked Judge John Nordberg to make an emergency motion to temporarily hire help from Wackenhut, a national security company.

There are now 54 Wackenhut employees working at the center, Dunlap said this week in a report to the judge.

Additionally, 61 permanent staff members have been hired.

Despite these hires, the center has not yet been able to overcome the void in the number of uncovered positions created by excessive staff member absences, Dunlap said.

According to the report, between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30, the average absentee rate for staff members at the center was 34 percent. That rate shot up even higher on weekend days.

Officials are in the process of imposing a new classification system, separating residents facing different charges, co-conspirators and rival gang members in both the living units and the classrooms.

In the new system, three "pods" of students will comprise one 54-resident unit, Dunlap said. Each unit will function as a separate "school within a school" and "facility within a facility."

One such unit, according to the report, is up and running. Residents of that unit, plus a number of special education students and several female residents, are among those allowed to return to class, Nancy B. Jefferson Assistant Principal Addie Stanton said.

Though located within the center, Nancy B. Jefferson School is run by Chicago Public Schools. Marva Whaley-Anobah, the former principal of Excel Academy High School on Chicago's West Side, replaced longtime principal Judith Adams this month.

Training Jefferson school and detention center staffers to work together is taking time, Wolf said.

According to the report, by January all special education residents, plus another unit, will return to the school.

The remainder of the residents will continue to be taught in their living units until "safe and secure conditions can be reasonably assured."