The Austin branch library and The Field School, a private, classical elementary school are ramping up their collaboration to expand learning opportunities for the students.
The Field School opened inside the former Francis Scott Key Elementary School building, 517 N. Parkside Ave., at the start of the 2022-2023 school year, a culmination of Austin resident Jeremy Mann’s years-long effort to open a classical school in the community. While he was still working on the renovations, he had a chance meeting with Austin branch library manager JoAnne Willis, and the conversation expanded into a collaboration. Since the school opened, the kids have been coming to the library for activities.
The collaboration expanded even further this school year, as a result of the temporary closure of Legler Regional Library. The staff were sent to out to Austin and Douglass branch libraries. The Austin branch got Legler’s children’s librarian, Jennifer Hargrave, for much of the remaining school year. She has been putting together reading materials and activities dealing with science topics such as astronomy, and she said she is eager to try to build the same kind of collaborations with other Austin schools.
Key Elementary was one of the 50 schools that the Chicago Public Schools district closed in 2013, mostly on the South and West sides. A year later, Mann was approached by “a close family friend” who introduced him to what he described as “a small group of educators, parents, and ministry leaders” to discuss what the possibility of opening a “diverse, classical, Christian school” on the West Side.
“We knew we wanted our school to be intentionally racially and socioeconomically diverse, reserving half our seats for low-income families,” Mann said. “We also wanted our school to be a classical school, where the text drives the learning as opposed to the teacher; this helps students be life-long, inquisitive learners.”
Christianity, he added, was also an important part of the vision for the school, but Field isn’t tied to a specific denomination, and being a Christian is not a requirement for enrollment.
Mann said he always wanted to open the school in Austin, because he and several school board members lived in the community. But original plans to move into Mars Hill Baptist Church fell through because of building code issues, and they temporarily operated a school in Oak Park. They bought the Key School building in 2018, after CPS put it up for sale, and it took another four years to rehab it.
As of this school year, Mann said, they have 258 students ranging from pre-Kindergarten to eighth grade.
“More Field School students come from Austin than any other neighborhood, but we have many families coming from Garfield Park, Oak Park, Lawndale, and neighborhoods further away,” he said.
Willis and Mann had their chance meeting about two or three years ago when the Key building was still being renovated.
“I ran into this guy at the swimming pool, and it turned out to be Jeremy Mann, the executive director of the Field School,” she said.
As they talked, Willis realized that Mann and his family were regulars at her library. Upon hearing about his plans for Field School, she offered to help spread the word.
“JoAnne was thrilled to hear about the possibility of more children returning to the area and visiting the library,” Mann said.
From there, they worked together to get the word out about their respective plans and programs. From there, it was an easy leap to working together on programs.
“Fundamentally, we want children to fall in love with learning, and reading is a great way to learn,” Mann said. “Students and their families often visit the library after school or on the weekends. Our teachers use the library system to source books for instruction.”
This school year, the kids visit the library about once a month. With the school only a block away, kids simply walk to the library. Willis said that she appreciates there are plenty of parents volunteering to watch the students – not that the kids need much supervision.
The early July flooding damaged the Legler Regional Library basement to the point in which it had to close for repairs until at least April 2024. In a late September interview, Hargrave said that while she was sorry that her home library was out of commission, she was grateful that she would be able to work with Field students for most of the school year.
She said that, this fall, they will be focusing on science, with worksheets and activities tied into kids’ science books from the library collection.
“We recognize that not every kid learns the same way, and we as a library want to support it,” Hargrave said.
She said that aside from helping kids learn, which is an important part of the library’s mission, she hopes that the program would encourage kids to use the library in the future.
“In the future, they might be able to use the resources to access education [opportunities] and find jobs,” Hargrave said.
She also said she hopes that the collaboration won’t stop with Field.
“We hope to reach out to all the charter schools, all the public schools and all the Catholic schools [in Austin] and serve them as well,” Hargrave said.
