Jim Iska
& Stone Scholastic Academy

Jim Iska & Stone Scholastic Academy

Stone Scholastic Academy is a K-through 8 magnet elementary school in the Edgewater neighborhood on the far north side of Chicago. It was our children’s school.  While I’ve been around the people in these photographs for years, beyond faces on the playground, I came to know the members of the Stone Graduating Class of 2019 for real when I volunteered to document the production of the school play.

To their credit, once the curtain rose, the teachers in charge of that project sat back and watched as the students managed every aspect of the production. What struck me was the way this group bonded together as a team to make the production a success.

That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise as many of these kids had known each other for nine years or more. That’s a good chunk of one’s life when you’re only fourteen years old.

To help celebrate the milestone of leaving the only school some of them have ever known, I chose to make portraits of graduates on their last full week at Stone. The setting and the choice of the people to be photographed with them, if any, was theirs.

The  2019 class of Stone has dispersed, most of them going on to CPS high schools like North Side Academy, Lane Tech, Jones, Walter Payton, Von Steuben and Senn, while others have moved to the suburbs. 

But my guess is the connections they made at Stone will be lifelong.