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Washburne's Checkered Past
By La Risa Lynch
See also:
Washburne Update: Restraint of Trades
Washburne Chef’s Program Today
Washburne Trade School has a vagabond history. The original school, on West 14th Street, was renamed for Elihu B. Washburne after his death in 1887. Washburne, a prominent Illinois politician, was a friend of both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
It served as an elementary school until early in 1919, when it became the Washburne Trade and Continuation School under a state mandate to train apprentices, according to records at the Chicago Board of Education.
That spring the federal government set up a temporary training program for disabled World War I veterans, sidetracking regular programs for five years, according to the 1941 book, "The Washburne Trade School," by John A. Lapp.
Chicago's trade unions soon established programs for budding machinists, carpenters and electrical workers. As Chicago blossomed into a steel city, the school expanded to include steam fitters in 1921 and metal lathers in 1928. Plumbing, millinery, and beauty culture were added in the 1930s, he wrote.
In 1934, the school moved to larger quarters at Division and Sedgwick streets on the Near North Side and became the Washburne Continuation and Apprentice School. In 1937 its name was changed to the Washburne Trade School.
By the 1940s, all of the apprenticeship programs at other public schools were transferred to Washburne.
In 1958, Washburne moved again when the school board purchased an old liquid carbonate factory on the Southwest Side at 31st Street and Kedzie Avenue for $1.8 million.
The unions began to leave Washburne to operate their own schools as early as 1968, as the construction boom in the suburbs pulled building trades away from the city.
In 1975, state Sen. Richard Newhouse persuaded the Illinois State Board of Education to cut off funds until school officials met a federal goal for minority enrollment.
The move did little to stop the union exodus. Throughout the 1970s, apprentice programs such as those for plumbers, iron workers, cement masons and glaziers relocated.
In 1979, Washburne met federal enrollment standards and the funds were restored. But eight unions had left and the construction industry was mired in a recession, with unemployment reaching 22.3 percent by 1982.
The controversy continued after the 1980 federal decree to desegregate the public schools. A Chicago Board of Education demand in 1986 that enrollment mirror the city's population prompted the carpenters, pipe fitters and electricians unions to leave.
Thomas Nayder, then-president of the Chicago Building Trades Council, was quoted as saying: "I get the feeling that they (the unions) think, 'Who needs all this hassle?'"
Despite the controversy, the school has given minorities and women a new start. In 1967, Eugene Williams graduated from Dunbar Vocational High School on the South Side and went to work for a sheet metal company. After spending six months hanging gutters at a stockyard, he enrolled in Washburne's sheet metal program. Today he is a sheet metal instructor at the Chicago Vocational High School, 2100 E. 87th St. He was lured by Washburne's promise of rigorous training and new opportunities.
"I knew I wanted to do this," Williams said. "We were a bunch of naive kids who worked hard, and if we didn't, we would get our butts kicked."
Article Taken from:
The Chicago Reporter
September/October 1994
La Risa Lynch is a free-lance writer.
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Washburne Update: Restraint of Trades
By Danielle Gordon
Excerpts taken from The Chicago Reporter
When students showed up for the first day of classes at the Washburne Trade School in September 1993, they found an empty and locked building. A note on one of the doors read: "Students, this school is closed: You will be notified by mail."
The Chicago Board of Education, which had operated Washburne since 1919, closed the tuition-free school for financial reasons. It sat vacant for nine weeks before reopening as part of the City Colleges of Chicago.
But one year later, it is far from business as usual at the West Side school, once one of the nation's top training centers for low-income adults and displaced workers.
Of Washburne's 16 programs, ranging from chefs' training to car repair, six have been merged with similar programs at two City Colleges campuses. Of the six, apprentice programs run by the painters and drywall finishers unions are packing up in December and moving to west suburban Berkeley, The Chicago Reporter found.
The fate of 10 other programs remains in doubt. Six have resumed at the mammoth, dilapidated Washburne building at 31st Street and Kedzie Avenue. Plans to move four others to City Colleges campuses have been put on hold because there is no money to pay for them, officials said.
To keep Washburne running, City Colleges will ask Illinois lawmakers to approve $6 million in state aid during the General Assembly's fall veto session. Chancellor Ronald Temple pulls no punches regarding the school's future. If the legislature refuses to fund Washburne, he said, "the Board (of Trustees) would have to consider whether or not to maintain these programs."
Whatever the outcome, the Washburne name has all but disappeared, leaving a legacy of more than 50,000 workers trained over a span of 75 years. Many found good jobs because of the school's national reputation, particularly in the culinary and building trades. In 1990, the last year for which figures are available, 85 percent of the 1,433 graduates went to work or continued their educations.
"Washburne graduates used to get hired because the industry recognizes what kind of people the school produces," said Al Ranallo, 46, who graduated from the welding program in August. "But now we have lost our name recognition, now the name means nothing."
Ranallo is currently taking a machine operations course at the Dawson Technical Institute, a vocational skills center at 3901 S. State St.
The Washburne name also has symbolized a decades-long struggle to open the trade school to minorities. That battle was largely won, but at considerable cost. The number of unions at the school fell from 17 to eight between 1965 and 1978.
While the percentage of minorities in union programs has grown, minority enrollment has dropped 70 percent. Of 2,343 students in apprentice programs in 1978, 466 were minorities. In May, they comprised 140 of the 363 students.
With the expected departure of the painters and drywall finishers, only two unions remain at the school-pending available funds.
Overall enrollment has dropped since the school reopened. Critics charge that many poor and minority students who would have gone to Washburne now may be shut out of City Colleges because they can't afford the tuition or meet the academic requirements.
Washburne's demise is part of an "all-out attack on adult education," said Guillermo Gomez, associate director of the Adult Education Reform Coalition, a nonprofit group that tracks education opportunities. "(Washburne) was the last chance for some of these nontraditional students. This discouragement could affect their entire lives."
Wayne D. Watson, acting president of Kennedy-King College, conceded that some of Washburne's programs may not survive. But he said the new Washburne will be better than ever.
"It's no longer the Washburne of two years ago," said Watson, who helped negotiate the Washburne deal. "Each program now stands on its own integrity.
"Washburne has a long, rich tradition... but it can always be improved," he added. "We're raising the standards. We're upping the ante."
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What's Cooking?
At the old Washburne building, students in tall white hats and jackets prepare meals and create wedding cakes and ice sculptures. Graduates of the chefs program typically find work in restaurants and corporate food service operations.
That's what attracted Lorraine Harris, 48, who began her training in September 1992 under the old Washburne and graduated in August under the new.
Harris enrolled after she was laid off as an inspector after 23 years at Oscar Mayer Foods in Chicago. She heard about Washburne through the Mayor's Office of Employment and Training, and federal job training funds paid for her shop fees, books, uniforms and cutlery.
"Washburne was giving me a second chance to move up and out of poverty," she said.
Then the school closed. When Harris returned in November, her classes weren't the same, she said. The new teachers seemed less sure of themselves, and class time was cut from 30 hours a week to about 23.
"My old teachers could look at the food and know if something was wrong," she said. "The new teachers have to taste the food."
William Jaeger, the program's acting director, said he lost four veteran teachers. "The old teachers were here 25 years," he said. "The new ones are still gaining experience as they go along."
But Harris feels shortchanged. After earning $11.20 an hour at Oscar Mayer, she now makes $7.54 an hour as a cook at Loretto Hospital, 645 S. Central Ave. Another person hired for the same job did not have Washburne training she said.
"I got less than what I had before," she said.
Watson offers a sharply different view. He speaks with pride about the chefs program and outlines an ambitious $14.8 million plan to create "the largest, state-of-the-art culinary school in the Midwest."
The money will be used to rehabilitate a building "accessible to the entire city," Watson said, though he won't reveal the site. He hopes the school will be ready by the fall of 1996."
"The major industry in Chicago is not steel, or machine shop," he said. "(It's) hotels and restaurants, travel and tourism. Washburne meets a number of our needs, but it isn't meeting the needs that exist. It's not producing enough, and we need to raise our standards one or two notches."
The money for the culinary school is part of a $55.6 million capital improvements package City Colleges will submit to the legislature next year.
"The first thing I need to know is the overall plan for adult education," said state Sen. Alice Palmer, a South Side Democrat. "Before giving money, the legislature will have to find out what's going on."
State Sen. Rickey Hendon, a West Side Democrat, vows a "vicious fight" in the legislature over Washburne. "We predicted a fiasco like this when City Colleges took overWashburne. We thought they would come looking for money."…
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Washburne studied law at Kent's Hill Seminary in 1836 and Harvard Law School in 1839. After being admitting to the bar in 1840 Washburne he worked as a lawyer in Galena, Illinois. A member of the Whig Party he failed in his attempt to be elected to the 31st Congress in 1848. However, he was successful in the 33rd Congress and took his seat in March, 1853.