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Nilda Vega
Blocks Together
Chicago

"I hope that one day we can see a new building," Nilda Vega, guidance counselor at Munoz Marin elementary school and community leader says as she leads a tour of the small building that holds 345 students every day. "I have been working two jobs, community leader and LSC secretary and teacher/guidance counselor. If I came this far, I won't stop until I can see a new building."

Vega, a guidance counselor at the Chicago public school for kindergarten through third graders, has shown the building to Education Secretary Richard Riley, met with Riley in Washington, and negotiated with Chicago's top board of education staff over the years. While there's no school yet, Munoz Marin did receive several temporary mobile units this year to house some of the overflow of students. The reason, she says, is the work of Blocks Together, which began organizing at the school just three years ago and on whose board she now serves.

Staff from Blocks Together came to the Local School Council, on which Vega represents the teachers. Every school in Chicago has an LSC, made up of community, parents, teachers, and the principal to run the school under Chicago's school reform model.

"We invited them in to try to help," Vega says.

Overcrowding, a problem across the city, is plain to see at Munoz Marin. The original library is now a classroom. The new library is just an area behind some dividers in one corner of the open space known as the multi-purpose room that takes up the middle of the small building. There are eight classrooms at Munoz Marin--plus, now, four classrooms in the mobile units. It's not enough for the kids, who eat in shifts, have no recess, and even come to school in shifts on a special rotation plan devised to maximize the use of the facility.

"If could do anything, I would make sure that children, all children--not a few children, all of them--receive equal opportunities in a safe environment. Primary kids need exercise. It's integral. We don't have a gym--we don't have space for that. It's sickening that these kids can't exercise out their energy," Vega says "Poor us who have to be teaching in these tiny holes when the kids don't have an outlet to release their energy!"

On top of the overcrowding, the building where Vega works is falling apart. Built in the 1970s, it was designed as a parent and child center rather than as a school--it was supposed to hold just a small number of kids and be a sort of community center for parents. Last year one classroom was shutdown for a time because of a cave-in of the floor after pipes underneath broke. Students in another room were unable to put their bags on the ground because of leaks that left puddles on the floor. Drains and pipes, roof, heating and cooling, and other systems are failing.

While Vega and Blocks Together continue to work on winning construction of a new school, improvements including the mobile units and a new roof have come in the past three years.

"Since I've been involved with Blocks Together, I've seen things happen," she says. "Better housing, a GED program, the parent patrols--all that's because of Blocks Together. Otherwise all the things we've done wouldn't have happened."

Making something happen and helping the students and families she counsels are two of the reasons Vega continues to be involved.

"My children are babies--not too much violence, gangs, teen pregnancy though there is some violence. I work a lot with families," she says. Many of the children she notes are raised not by their parents, nor by their grandparents--but by their great-grandparents. "Those families, they need support."

Ten years ago she came to Munoz Marin as a teacher and became guidance counselor. Originally from the central area of Puerto Rico, Vega came to Chicago and studied at Northeastern Illinois University and Chicago State. She has also taken classes in Mexico at Universidad de Guadalajara and in Spain. Love of travel was the first thing that brought her to Chicago.

"Today I had to call parents because one third grader, a 9-year-old, started to show the inclination to join a gang--signing and drawing, you see their intuition and desire to join a gang. I say to the kids, what do you expect from life? If you join a gang they will be just using you. Soon you are going to be six feet under or in jail. You become a teacher, lawyer, doctor, writer, carpenter, mechanic, bus driver. Make money, you can enjoy life instead of hurting people to get your money."