Odds and ends with some a bit odder than others:
English, please: Wrote an editorial for today’s issue lauding District 97 for its intense focus on equity (aka: the achievement gap). Had to work my way through a three-page memo to the school board from Supt. Carol Kelley seeking approval of a new administrative position tied to equity.
Have to say this was the most jargon-bound, hard-to-connect-with piece of writing I’ve been forced to digest in a good long time. Is there anything worse than education-speak? I’d rather read a long lease, an economist’s analysis of trade policy, a baseball statistician’s take on why the Cubs won’t repeat as World Champs than make my way through another of Kelley’s treatises.
Bluestone: With 2018 plans proceeding for major sewer work, road paving and streetscaping of Lake Street from Harlem to Austin, the debate continues over just what materials to use. Inexplicably to me, there is still some Marion Street bluestone fetish at work in the planning. Expensive and quick to deteriorate. Let’s hear it for good old concrete and a few brick pavers.
New life on Roosevelt: Alcuin Montessori School, a pioneering adopter of the Montessori method way back in the early 1960s, is looking to expand, and its chosen site is thankfully on Roosevelt Road. Which is more exciting, that Alcuin is growing its infant and toddler program and its middle school or that it has chosen the pretty much derelict southern border of Oak Park to do its growing?
The school will retain its existing space at First United Methodist Church on North Oak Park Avenue. The expansion will be on a recently cleared lot at Roosevelt and Home Avenue, currently owned by Community Bank.
Roosevelt Road, particularly the Oak Park side of the street, badly needs institutional investment. The Berwyn side of Roosevelt, abetted by an active TIF, has fared better though it has been overrun by tacky video gaming parlors. Alcuin’s arrival will make Roosevelt a destination for many families not used to traversing Roosevelt Road. Hopefully it will be a catalyst for further renewal on the street.
Trashing the burbs: Through the miracle of Facebook, I just stumbled on a snarky 2014 piece from Thrillist. The writer, born a suburbanite, has good fun taking down suburbs from Kenilworth to Country Club Hills. Accompanied by the requisite picture of the Wright Home & Studio — hey, it could have been the iconic image of the Lake Theatre marquee — he says of Oak Park: “Looking to start a family, but have a part of you that still desperately wants to cling to some semblance of city life? Oak Park has a single-family home waiting for you at the low price of … wait, it just went up another 50K.”
Sox-Cubs: By the time you read this, the Sox will have won the first two games of the so-called Crosstown Classic and I’ll be on my way to Wednesday night’s game at Comiskey. Watch out, Cubs, we have James Shields on the mound. Yes, that James Shields.
Out East: Just back from two weeks of vacation. All good. Had a wonderful time.
We flew out to Connecticut on Southwest. Not a fan of flying anymore for all the expected reasons. But it was OK. Had decided that we’d make the return trip from New York State on the overnight Amtrak train. Sounded, in my affinity for 1940s b&w movies, if not glamorous, at least simpler. Spending an extra two-and-a-half hours in the Rochester train station waiting for a late train was unexpected. How can a train that starts in New York City get that late before Rochester? Unknowable and unexplained by fairly grumpy staffers.
Spent a week in Newtown, the first time our family had been back since the school shooting. Hard to shake that reality as you walk around a town that looks the same lovely way but has been through an event so unimaginable.
