Decisions and details

Add comment April 30th, 2008

      The last few days have been all about putting dozens of pieces in place for the project launch on the Web site and in the newspaper. We’re selecting photos, creating a map and timeline, editing stories and videos and writing headlines.

By the time we’re done, more than two dozen talented journalists will have had their hands on some piece of this project launch.  It’s creative teamwork and that feels good.

Rockford has known good, bad times; now we’re going to be a part of Chicagoland

6 comments April 30th, 2008

Hi, I’m Chuck Sweeny, political editor of the Rockford Register Star, or rrstar.com if you prefer. Listen up:

Rockford adapts.

The city started as a manufacturing center in the old water power district south of downtown. There, fast-running water from a mill race channeled off the Rock River turned gears attached to leather belts that ran machines, in the days before electricity.

Rockford built — and still builds — all kinds of things out of wood, metal, plastic and fiberglass.

Because manufacturing is essentially all we’ve ever done, we’ve gone through disastrous economic situations — 1893 was awful. More than a dozen furniture factories went bust. Luckily, P.A. Peterson rescued them in a co-op arrangement.

When the Depression hit in 1929, Rockford had its own shanty towns, one near Charles and 22nd Street, which an old Swede remembered when he returned to Rockford a few years back from Stockholm to relive memories of his youth here in the 1930s. Times were so bad here back then that the man’s immigrant family had to leave the Not-So-Promised Land and returned to the Old Country. They were not the only ones.

Rockford lost 10,000 people during the 30s, but the population began growing with the onset of World War II. After that war, the economy took off like gangbusters as Rockford’s dynamic companies, most of them home-owned, provided valuable products to the auto , machine tool and aviation industries. Baby Boomers, who grew up here in those prospeous times, tend to think that Rockford was always riding on easy street.

We hit a major speed bump in the early 80s, and the population declined 9,000 in that decade. But, back we came in the 90s, as manufacturers learned to work smarter and began to realize that “export” doesn’t mean sending products to Cincinnatti.

Now, Rockford is uneasy again, and once more is trying to find its place in the world. Unlike cities such as Dayton, Flint or Peoria, we’re not dependent totally on one company. But we are still largely a manufacturing center, and we’ve taken another big hit as competition from Asia has drained jobs away from us.

What’s the next Rockford going to look like? One thing I know for sure: We’ll become more and more integrated into greater Chicagoland. Don’t fret: That’s what’s going to save Rockford from the fates of isolated small cities like those in Iowa, which are dying because they’re not part of a huge, metropolitan area.

Like it or not, people no longer live in cities and towns. The majority of Americans live in large population blobs I call “megametros.” In one series on Rockford’s challenges, which I did back in the 1990s, I referred to our region as “The Chi-Waukee Metroplex.” I don’t like that monicker anymore; it’s too Cheesehead-heavy.

But hear this warning: Unless Rockford upgrades our public schools and adds significantly to our post secondary education opportunities, our importance to Chicagoland is going to be minimal and we’ll be left to be the distribution center kings and queens.

Where children live

2 comments April 30th, 2008

As I examine the increasingly urban character of Rockford schools, Joel Cowen of the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Health Systems Research shared some interesting facts with those of us journalists working on the 180 Degrees project.

According to Cowen in 2000: Area black children were the least likely to live in what is generally considered a traditional family. Nearly half of all black children in Winnebago County live with a single mother, 26.5 percent live with a married couple, and 12.2 percent live with a grandparent. Meanwhile, white and Hispanic children are more likely to live with a couple. More than 73 percent of white children and 60.7 percent of Hispanic children live with a married couple. 

How do you measure success?

1 comment April 30th, 2008

Once of the challenges of a project like 180 Degrees is how to decide whether the community is making progress.

There are numbers that can easily be tracked, graduation rates, unemployment, wages, etc, but do the numbers tell the real story?

For example, the stats may say the crime rate is down, but if your garage has been broken into twice in a month you probably wouldn’t care what the numbers said, you wouldn’t feel safe.

And on graduation rates, just because a kid graduates from high school doesn’t mean that kid is ready to join the work force.

So what do you think. What is the best way to measure success?

Innovation alive at Roosevelt

Add comment April 29th, 2008

For my part of the 180 Degrees project, I am looking at the changes over the last three decades in area schools and especially the Rockford School District. 

My major finding is that the students who make up the Rockford School Disrtrict are vastly different than they were 30 years ago.

 No longer are Rockford schools the suburban-like school system they were in the 1980s when just 25 percent of students came from low-income families. Today, Rockford schools are urban with almost 70 percent of students coming from low income households.

Although Rockford elementary schools have largely found ways to adapt to the changing needs of their students, high schools have not. Dismal graduation rates, high drop out rates and high truancy rates are the norm.

But today I visited an innovative and often over-looked high school. And it’s right over there on Haskell Avenue in Rockford.

Roosevelt Community Education Center and alternative high school is an impressive place that’s so innovative, it reminds of some of the charter public schools I recently visited in Chicago.

There at Roosevelt, I met one student who was pregnant at age 18 and could have wound up a single mother without even a high school diploma. Another student I met has spent parts of her high school career at five high schools in four school districts and two states. This once homeless dropout was able to get back in school through the district’s homeless program.

Thanks to Roosevelt’s unique program that allows students to work at their own pace and offers daycare and preschool for children of teen mothers (and even a few fathers), these and hundreds more students are getting a diploma with plans for further education, typically at Rock Valley College.

These are students for whom traditional high schools like Auburn, Jefferson, Guilford and East did not work. At Roosevelt, they told me that they develop a personal relationship with teachers who seem to care whether they graduate or not.

As the community looks at high school reform and the possibility of bringing public charter school proposals, it would do well to first take a close look at how Roosevelt does high school. It may well already be on to an answer for how to improve high school graduation rates and encourage students to move on to college.

Remember 25% unemployment?

Add comment April 29th, 2008

My role in this project is to examine Rockford’s economy since 1980. It’s no surprise, that a big theme of this story is the decline of manufacturing.

About 37 percent of the city’s workforce was involved in manufacturing in 1980, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Today, that number hovers around 21 percent. The decline is more significant when you realize that our workforce has grown from 143,000 workers in 1980 to nearly 189,000 workers today. So manufacturing is a smaller slice of a larger pie.

National Lock, Amerock, Barber Coleman and many more factories that helped make Rockford the “Screw Capital of the World,” are gone.

Did you used to work at one of those places? Maybe you remember what it was like when unemployment in Rockford reached 25 percent in early 1983? Or maybe you survived other economic downturns in the early 1990s and in the months following 9-11. How did you do it? I’d love to hear your story. Send me an e-mail at iguerrero@rrstar.com or call me at 815-987-1371.

Photos Then and Now

Add comment April 28th, 2008

Today we are pulling old photos from our archives and sending photographers out to shoot new ones. That’s for a photo gallery we’ll post online that will look at Then & Now of the city’s west side. I love to linger over photographs of years past and I know readers do, too.

We’ll start the project by talking about some of the changes on the city’s west side over the last three decades. This morning before work, I drove around the west side. I wanted to be sure the project launch stories capture the right tone. My quick reconnaissance told me they do, mostly because of Judy Emerson’s deft touch on the keyboard.

Come on, Rockford. Be positive

6 comments April 28th, 2008

I’ve never understood why so many people are so down on this community. I moved here eight years ago. Figured I would stay two and move on to another news organization. Ended up falling in love with the people and the town. Mostly, it’s the people who are from here who dis it the most. Why is that? I don’t have bad things to say about Peoria (my hometown) or Cedarburg, Wis. (a town just north of Milwaukee where I lived through middle and high school).

(Just look at what people had to say about Rockford after Rolling Stone blasted the town.)

You hear about “that school system,” the crime rate, the lack of jobs and so on. These are all things we can do something about.

There was a big push last year to be positive about Rockford and the surrounding area when consultant Rebecca Ryan visited. She presented a report that highlighted ways our region could be more vital. She encouraged Rockfordians to sign a pledge. By signing, you agreed to be positive about Rockford. I signed it way back when. (Unfortunately, the pledge appears to be offline now.)

ALAN LEON | RRSTAR.COM FILE PHOTO
Rebecca Ryan (right) of Next Generation Consulting answers a question posed by Linda Grist Cunningham, Register Star executive editor, during an Editorial Board meeting held Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2007, at the News Tower. Ryan answered questions regarding the results of her study: “Attracting and Retaining Young Talent to the Rockford Area.”

I feel I am being positive about Rockford with this project: 180 Degrees: Solutions for a Better Rockford. Want to find ways to make Rockford a better place. Reduce crime. Improve education. Promote our community. Not simple things to achieve. But if we truly make this a campaign and we all get on board, we could make a difference.

Will you join the movement?

How did we get here?

Add comment April 28th, 2008

This 180-degree project came out of a lightly attended Editorial Board meeting. Linda Cunningham, Judy Emerson and I were the only ones who met that day.

Judy mentioned she had talked to an attorney who said he could set up an interview with Karl Fort, the leader of the Gangster Disciples in the early ’90s.

Fort’s name had us reminiscing about the “Rout at dawn” headline that led the newspaper on July 29, 1993 and how a similar arrest a few years ago hardly grabbed our attention and didn’t even make it to Page 1.

Linda talked about Fort’s influence on the drug trade, gangs and crime in general. We talked about how much Rockford has changed over the years.  Linda said it’s time we took a look at how Winnebago County came to have the highest crime rate in the state. The seed for the project was planted and started to take root over the next few weeks.

Since then there has been a lot of conversation, brainstorming and hard work by Judy and others on the reporting staff. We started talking about crime, but the project has grown to envelop all aspects of life in the Rock River Valley.

The project ties in closely to our Editorial Agenda. Lots of work needs to be done yet, but stories should be available soon.

We eagerly await your reaction and suggestions.

Growing number of religions in Rock River Valley

2 comments April 28th, 2008

My role in this projects is to collect numbers. Just in this morning is a bevy of religious data from The Glenmary Research Center.

According to Glenmary, the number of religious bodies with churches in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties grew from 38 in 1980 to 47 in 1990 and to 53 in 2000.

These numbers do not include historically African American churches who rarely respond to Glenmary’s surveys.

Among the religious groups now with churches in the Rock River Valley that didn’t have a presence here in 1980:

American Baptist Association, American Carpatho-Russion Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, Apostolic Christian Church of America Inc., Baha’i, Buddhism, Church of God of Prophecy, Community of Christ, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Muslim, National Association of Free Will Baptists, New Testament Association of Independent Baptist Churches, Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and The Wesleyan Church.

The Catholic Church remains the single largest religious body with 78,151 adherents as of 2000. That was up from 47,880 in 1980.