Make a difference; join our campaign

Add comment May 5th, 2008

We’ve already gotten some response from readers who want to help turn Rockford around. Do you want to help? Find out how here.

We also asked you for your hopes and dreams for Rockford. Here’s what Terry Carl of Loves Park had to say.

Kicking off 180 Degrees

Add comment May 2nd, 2008

We officially introduced our campaign this morning on rrstar.com. And the response (based on page views) has been strong.

The highlights for me are the video stories produced by videographer Alan Leon. There’s this one about retired police officer Sherri Glover, who was shot in her squad car while she filled out reports. And this one featuring Rockford residents Amy Hill and Willie Ashford, who have watched their west-side neighborhood deteriorate. You’ll also find links to videos of the key staffers behind this effort here.

In Sunday’s paper, look for our print coverage in the Opinions section.

we have to work together

Add comment May 2nd, 2008

today, we’ve posted more than a half-dozen videos as part of this 180 degrees project to find solutions for a better rockford.

if you watched any of them, you noticed the introduction: we worked with our partners, wrex-13, to compose the images, animate the compass and choose the music. and judy emerson appeared on the air last night to introduce the project (video to come).

thanks to brian rieder, eric wilson and maggie hradecky at the tv station for their help so far.

and thanks to chris soprych and alan leon for pulling these first of many videos together.

the power of 2 is just one example of working together. to find solutions for a better rockford, which is this project’s mission, our whole community must pull together.

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. 

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.

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?