John Hope College Prep


John Hope College Preparatory High School is a public four–year high school located in the Englewood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Opened in 1971, Hope is operated by the Chicago Public Schools district. The school is named for educator and religious leader John Hope. It shares its campus with Kipp Bloom College Prep School, a neighborhood charter middle school that opened for the 2013–14 school year.

History

The school opened in August 1971 as John Hope Middle School, a neighborhood middle school serving students in grades six through eight. The Board of Education added 9th grade in 1997 and subsequently converted Hope into a high school to alleviate overcrowding in high schools in the area. Mahalia Hines, the mother of rapper Common, was principal from 1996 to 2005, during which years the school had the best academic results in the area. The middle school was reinstated in 2003 and again phased out in 2007. Beginning in 2005, when Englewood Academy High School was phased out, attendance borders were redrawn and Hope High received an influx of neighborhood students that it had trouble integrating. Under the Renaissance 2010 program, several charter high schools were opened nearby and parents were also allowed to choose from schools district-wide. Fewer parents opted to send their children to Hope, while the population of Englewood was declining. In 2018, with only 36 out of a potential 638 students within the school's attendance boundary enrolled, Chicago Public Schools decided to phase out it and two other Englewood schools, Harper High School and TEAM High School, and to close Robeson High School at the end of the academic year to use its site for a new high school.

Athletics

Hope competes in the Chicago Public High School League and is a member of the Illinois High School Association. The school sport teams are nicknamed Eagles. The boys' basketball team were regional champions five times. The girls' basketball team were regional champions eight times and Class AA three times.