Invisible lines
TRACI BURTON IS 25 YEARS OLD, BUT COULD EASILY PASS for one of the seniors at Benton Harbor High School. Standing by the trophy case in the lobby, she’s small and youthful, dressed casually, like many of the students walking through the metal detector toward lockers painted with black and orange tiger paws, symbols of the school mascot. People here say they have Tiger Pride.
Generations of Burton’s family have lived in Benton Harbor, a city of 10,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan. She went to a performing-arts-focused elementary school there and got a great education. But when the time came for middle and high school, she left for a neighboring district because everyone told her that would be better. Then she went to college, graduated and came home, taking a job teaching at a local elementary school.
She was shocked by the change. The kind of education she received at the performing-arts school, which has since closed, was gone. The teaching staff at her new school was a revolving door of substitutes, and her third-grade students couldn’t read. “I took the decline very personally,” she says. “I knew I had to do something bigger to help.”
Once a thriving center of industry, Benton Harbor’s economy has collapsed. The high school building is a century old, worn in places, with an empty feeling inside. The streets around it are filled with large homes—some well-kept, others crumbling—abandoned businesses and vacant lots. In the public schools, test scores are so low and finances so dire that last year Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer proposed shutting down the high school and sending all the students to nearby districts and charter schools. Parts of Main Street look less boarded up than bombed out.
But drive another block, past the Family Dollar and Tim’s Bail Bonds (STUCK IN JAIL? WE CAN BAIL!), and something unusual happens. Directly across the street, there’s a gleaming corporate complex. Another hundred yards and you’re on a bridge with a marina full of fancy yachts to the left and a Jack Nicklaus Design championship golf course to the right. Then you’re across the river, in downtown St. Joseph, Mich., on streets full of restaurants, jewelry stores and pet boutiques. The two neighborhoods are a half-mile away from each other,
