School district starts classes separated by race.

[Prairie Gates]

25. Evanston was brutally redlined as was most of Chicago

(As a side note, we're not supposed to call Evanston a "suburb." It's a "city," doncha know!)

It would be hard to overestimate the racial housing divide in Evanston. Northwest parts of Evanston are pretty much North Shore communities. You may as well be in Winnetka, Kenilworth, etc. Far southern Evanston is pretty much Chicago, and what many would consider a dangerous and economically challenged part of it. Evanston also has a lot of very rich areas, and a lot of faculty-related areas for Northwestern.

I think the odd thing about it is that there's only the one massive high school (which is, as mopinko points out, one of the most desirable high schools in the state). I do think it's probably odd for a high school to be that big and to serve an area with such vast disparities, and for those disparities to have been pretty obviously caused (in part, of course) by deliberate and systematic racial segregation. And for the high school to be the "zoned" school, essentially.

Which is all to say that this is a fairly complicated situation. I would probably be more on the mopinko side of the debate than the former9thward side.