Excerpt
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Little Black Pearl Academy, a public school on the South Side of Chicago, is trying to write a new songbook for success. It started last fall, when the school’s founder, Monica Haslip, transformed her after-school art center into a full-time public school focused on the arts.
Her students come from some of the highest-crime areas in the city. The undertaking was born from frustration.
MONICA HASLIP, Founder, Little Black Pearl Academy: My biggest motivation for this school was about looking at the volume and the number of children that we have in Chicago that are dropping out of school.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Haslip partnered with Chicago public schools to identify students on the wrong track.
MONICA HASLIP: A lot of our students that we have had had really poor attendance prior to coming here, so we believe and we have been able to see that by offering them access to the arts, that in itself is the thing that is inviting them to come to school every day.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The hope is that art can offer students, who may be distracted or even traumatized by violence that surrounds them, a way to return to learning.
Why art? Why is this the reason that they should come?
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