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The local school community held a press conferenceto reject the designation. In a press release onDecember 13, 2004, Linda Sarate, one of the original14 hunger strikers, stated: “We just want everyoneto remember that our schools were the result of acommunity struggle that did not have anything todo with Renaissance 2010.” TAC member Josie Yanguasadded, “We share some of the same concernsthat other folks have from around the city regardingRen10. It just leaves too many unanswered questions,on issues like evaluation process, the community’srole in governance, and autonomies”(De Leon andCoronado 2004). Despite a press conference and apress release objecting to the categorization, ChicagoPublic Schools currently lists all four of the smallschools in LVLHS on their Renaissance 2010 website(Schools 2007).Contested SpaceAlthough construction has been completed and theschool is in its second year of operation, the spacecontinues to be contested. While the bricks andmortar are fixed, the meaning of the space is not.Constructed by a design team to reflect the values ofsocial justice embodied in the struggle for the school,the building is constantly taking on new meanings.Before the school opened, for example, the ChicagoPublic School Capital Planning Group, operatingunder the (often contested) desegregation consentdecree in Illinois, drew the boundaries for the schoolso that 30 percent of its slots are secured for studentsfrom neighboring North Lawndale, a predominatelyAfrican-American neighborhood. This action hasresulted in tension between residents of the twoneighborhoods. In order to represent the populationserved, its teachers and administrators, as well as theofficial school website, call the school Little VillageLawndale High School (LVLHS). However, the frontof the building bears the name “Little Village HighSchool” in large block letters (see figure 7). Thissemantic discrepancy affects who feels “ownership”over the school.Controversies over boundary lines and whocan be admitted to the school have also changedits meaning for residents of both Little Village andNorth Lawndale. To those who are denied access, theimpressive spire and $63 million campus representwhat their children are not able to receive. Recently,State Senator Martin Sandoval created a stir whenhe initiated a referendum on the issue of whetherthe boundaries of the school should be changed toinclude more residents of Little Village. The results ofthe referendum showed that a slight majority of LittleVillage residents who completed the referendum werein favor of redrawing the boundaries. While this referendumwas purely advisory and no boundary lineswere redrawn, the meaning of the school continuesto be contested (Rossi 2006: 6).David Harvey’s assessment of housing resourcesasserts that residential inequality is due to the scarcityof good housing, itself a product of a capitalist society.The LVLHS case reveals that there is a scarcityof educational resources in Chicago and that particularcommunities are excluded from deciding how theyare distributed. The events described above demonstratethe struggle over the unequal distribution ofeducational resources and the ability of residents todetermine if, how, and where public money is spentin providing educational resources for their neighborhoods.152Critical Planning Summer 2006 2007