Austin Polytechnical Academy in Chicago will welcome 258 students this fall in its high-tech manufacturing training program — a triumph at what was one of the city’s most violence-scarred schools.

The academy is also a triumph for Dan Swinney, a former machinist who helped create the new school within the public school system in 2007. The academy is intended to deliver a “two-fer”: help for beleaguered manufacturing firms and an economic jolt to struggling communities.

At age 63, Swinney heads an alliance in Chicago working to promote manufacturing as a source of middle-class jobs. After 13 years as a metal worker, Swinney was convinced that manufacturing jobs could help local communities thrive while providing firms skilled labor.

“I came to the conclusion that the devastating poverty that we have in certain communities in Chicago and throughout the country has really not been necessary,” he said. “It’s a byproduct, and there are things that you can do about it.”

Plans are under way to develop two more high schools in Chicago next year as well as an elementary school, followed by a possible national expansion.

Swinney knows about the value of manufacturing skills firsthand. He grew up wanting to be a veterinarian, but found his direction in the social activism of the 1960s, working in the civil rights movement in the rural South. After college he turned down law school to go work as a machinist, because he felt he could learn more about helping the disadvantaged on the “front lines” than he could with legal training.

Swinney’s involvement with union politics led him to create the Center for Labor and Community Research (CLCR) in the early 1980s to examine why manufacturing jobs were evaporating, and what to do about it.

Initially, the group was reactive, responding to crisis. Chicago was hit by a wave of plant closings in the 1980s and 1990s, with thousands of jobs lost. Those losses were largely preventable, Swinney thought, and in the late 1990s, CLCR shifted course, and began advancing the idea that manufacturing could continue to be the backbone of the nation’s economy.

The missing ingredient was skilled labor. Manufacturing around the world had clearly changed in reaction to globalization, but Swinney argues that most of the jobs being sent offshore are those within publicly traded companies (which often serve international markets) and those requiring simple, rather than more complex manufacturing skills

“There are around 13,000 publicly traded companies, and those are the ones people think about when they think about manufacturing – the Motorolas of the world. But you’ve got 8,000,000 privately held companies, typically locally owned. And they need skilled labor, too,” he said. Swinney saw an opportunity and a vision for the future in that void of local skilled labor.

Now he chairs the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, an alliance of the Illinois Manufacturing Association, local government and community leaders, and the state AFL-CIO.

In 2005 Swinney tried to convince the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools of the need for top-notch manufacturing training within the schools. Initially, he was met with skepticism. Manufacturing wasn’t even thought of as a significant part of the economy. The CMRC couldn’t find a guidance counselor who would suggest manufacturing as a possible career to high school students. Many were still wary of the idea of vocational training; it read too much like the steering of minorities into menial jobs.

But Swinney persisted, and together with the CMRC created a new school within the Chicago Public School system. Austin Polytechnical Academy opened its doors in the fall of 2007 with a single freshman class of 130 students in a primarily African-American community on the West Side. Two-thirds of the class is female. About 20 percent are students with disabilities, specifically recruited to take advantage of opportunities in manufacturing.

The school plans to add an additional class each year until topping out at around 550 students. Classes run from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and all students are required to participate in daily on-site athletic programs to reinforce the value of teamwork.