OPRF High School board President Jeff Weissglass recently announced that the board will attempt to engage the entire District 200 community in seeking a solution to the issue of the school’s aging pools [Solving the OPRF pool problem, Viewpoints, March 2].
Weissglass said three community-engagement meetings will be held in April, in which new or newly-considered pool proposals will be unveiled along with estimates for their respective construction and annual operating costs.
Community-wide input is a positive and needed addition to the discussion, yet there will still be many voters who will be unable to attend one of these meetings. Because of this reality, the plan that is favored in the community engagement process should go on the ballot for voter approval and funding authority. That was the intent of the Petition for Referendum and the more than 4,300 voters who signed it.
One of the new plans under consideration is actually an old plan. In 2005, the high school considered expanding one of its pools by removing an adjacent load-bearing wall, but the plan was rejected at the time for being too expensive. Revisiting this 2005 pool plan is encouraging. Many people who signed the petition felt that renovating the existing pools was not fully vetted in recent discussions.
Weissglass maintains that the pools play an essential role in the school’s physical education curriculum. Yet it is important to underscore that swimming is an OPRF-imposed, mandatory requirement, not a state one. In an effort to solve the OPRF pool problem, a logical first step would be to drop the archaic requirement that all students must take swimming.
Many students entering OPRF already know how to swim and could pass a basic standardized swim test. By dropping the requirement, the inflated need for pool water declines sharply. It is also relevant to remember that most high schools do not have pools. In fact, high school swimming pools are an anachronism. According to USA Swimming, most high schools dealing with aging pools are not building new pools on-site. Many are shutting them down, and some are collaborating with their respective communities to build a pool and share usage as well as building and maintenance costs. Accordingly, I am pleased that the school board is exploring a joint pool option with the Park District of Oak Park.
Pools are expensive to build and maintain. Voters should ultimately decide the merits of such an expenditure, as taxpayer dollars spent on a pool are dollars not spent elsewhere. For example, Glenbard West High School is wrapping up construction of a $16.5 million, voter-approved addition that will yield eight state-of-the-art science labs, along with additional space and building upgrades. Glenbard West has no pool, never did, and has no plans to build one, yet it is a highly ranked high school in Illinois. In fact, in recent polls it ranks higher than OPRF.
I look forward to attending a community meeting in April and will support a pragmatic solution to the pools. Hopefully as a community, we can agree on one.
Monica Sheehan, an Oak Park resident, was one of the leaders of the recent referendum petition drive.