When two staff members at an Oak Park music school abruptly stopped reporting for their shifts as the presence of immigration officers in the village grew, management at the school took notice.
School of Rock Oak Park soon learned that the two staff members had stopped coming to work because they feared they’d be detained and deported as the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Midway Blitz mass deportation effort began ramping up in Chicagoland last year. Now, the music school has organized an ongoing fundraiser to benefit the staff members, who are remaining anonymous, and their families, according to Amy Renzulli, the music school franchise’s owner.
The staffers didn’t ask for the fundraiser, and it took some convincing for them to accept the money, Renzulli said. Over its first two weeks, the fundraiser generated over $4,000 in community donations to support them.
“They’re proud, they have families, they want to work, they don’t want to have to rely on other people’s generosity, but they’re grateful,” Renzulli said
The school had also kept paying the staffers their wages, Renzulli said.
“We kept paying them while they were out,” she said. “It wasn’t that much money but it was something we could do.
Renzulli said the school had run fundraisers in the past to support staff who’d lost their homes in fires and navigated serious health diagnoses, so leaning on the school’s community to help support staff members missing work due to fear of deportation came naturally.
“I find that a lot of people are asking ‘what can I do’ and ‘how can I help,” she said. “I think I’ve tried to do what I can with the resources that I have. And when I say resources I really don’t mean money, I mean the community that we’ve built.”
In addition to the two staffers, the school, which provides music education and performance opportunities to children, teens and adults, has likely lost some students as fear of deportation intensified among area immigrants last year, she said. The school, run for the last 13 years out of a solid concrete building on Lake Street that used to house a roofing company, adopted a buzz-in door lock system years ago, which Renzulli said she’s thankful for after seeing images of immigration agents entering childcare facilities and local businesses to detain people.
As the fundraiser continues, Renzulli said she wants the school to continue fostering a safe, welcoming community for all.
“When you’re here, harmonizing, singing with each other, those are good vibrations and it can counteract what’s happening outside,” she said. “This building is a fortress and it’s a shelter and it’s a place that I think is really important right now.”
