89 groups get Annenberg go-ahead
Eighty-nine of the 174 school networks that applied for 1995 Annenberg grants have been given the go-ahead to submit full proposals.
Half are seeking planning grants, and half are seeking implementation grants. A total of $3 million will be distributed. Each of the letters of intent was reviewed by five members of the grant program’s Reform Collaborative, a body of 23 school reform activists.
Networks that were not selected for further consideration were invited to revamp their letters of intent and resubmit them in 1996. Guidelines for 1996 grants will be distributed near the end of this year.
Albert Logan
Albert Norwood Logan Jr., a member of the first Board of Education appointed after passage of the School Reform Act, died Sept. 12. He was 75.
As a member of the board from 1990 to 1992, Mr. Logan was an outspoken critic of busing, arguing that the money could be better spent on improving neighborhood schools.
He was involved in education most of his life. From 1953 to 1965, he taught in the Chicago public schools. He then became an associate professor of history in City Colleges of Chicago. From 1982 to 1988, he was a trustee of the University of Illinois.
Mr. Logan worked for People’s Energy Corps. for 21 years, retiring in 1990 as manager of employee relations.
Peggy Gordon
Margaret “Peggy” Gordon, who came to be known as the LSCs’ lawyer, was remembered for her dedication to public education, civil rights and her family.
“Everyone could trust her. She was tough. She was firm. And she was all of these things with grace, dignity and style,” Joan Jeter Slay of Designs for Change told several hundred friends and colleagues of Mrs. Gordon who gathered at the University Club Sept. 17 to celebrate her life.
Peggy Gordon died July 28 of breast cancer. She was 67.
Mrs. Gordon devoted the last five years of her life to Chicago school reform, first as the founding executive director of the Lawyers’ School Reform Advisory Project and then as the director of the Fund for Education Reform. She recruited and trained more than 100 volunteer lawyers to help LSC members get their bearings and “become their own advocates,” Slay noted. Gordon also worked directly with council members and with board officials.
Previously, as an assistant U.S. attorney, she handled race discrimination cases against the Chicago Board of Education, the Chicago Park District and the town of Cicero.
“She only took on things in which she thoroughly believed,” her daughter Anne, said. Anne Gordon noted that she is walking in her mother’s footsteps: Anne works for the Cooperative for Research in Education, a small non-profit organization in South Africa that is training community leaders and groups.
—Linda Lenz, Lynnette Richardson