While the District 200 school board, neighbors and various community stakeholders debated the location for a new pool facility at the Sept. 23, board meeting, another battle was going on that evening at the high school.
The Oak Park and RiverForestHigh School girl’s swim team lost their first meet of the season that evening to FenwickHigh School. OPRF team captains Jocelyn Weisman and Mia Andreoli hustled from the east pool to the Little Theater, where that night’s board meeting to decide on a pool site was taking place.
They spoke about the need for a new pool, not just for them but for others on campus, and off, that use the current pools.
“Oftentimes people say ‘we don’t need a new pool; it’s just the swim team, the water polo team and synchronized swimming,’ which is a lot of people as it is,” Weisman said. “But class for gym is required to graduate; that means every student here will be using the pool at some point in time.”
The east pool, used primarily by the girl’s team, and the west pool that is used by the boy’s teams, are constantly in use and in poor shape, Weisman and Andreoli said.
“The amount of people that are swimming in this pool everyday and every year is continuing to grow, and that means there are more and more people at risk because of the health regulations that are showing themselves in our pool,” Weisman said.
Along with bad air quality, which makes it difficult to get through a hard practice, the floor of the west pool, in particular, is so slimy that some students have fallen as a result, Andreoli said, adding that nets also had to be put up on the ceiling due to falling tiles.
“Being the team that practices the most out of any team here at OPRF every morning and every afternoon, except for Friday morning, and then Saturday mornings — we feel like we should have a safer environment to be in during all of those hours,” Weisman said.
But many have heard these and other concerns before. Others who spoke during public comments at the board meeting also acknowledged that. So did the board members. And even those community stakeholders who represent other youth sports and interests.
Almost everyone that night said the high school needs a new pool. The only problem is there’s no agreement on where to build it. And after more than two hours of board discussion and public comments — not to mention previous meetings the last two years on the issue — there’s still no decision on where to build a new pool facility.
Instead, it’s back to the drawing board for the district — and more waiting for the roughly 100 student swimmers and other off-campus youth groups that use the nearly 100 year old pools.
The D200 school board, which governs OPRF, was unable to pick a location that evening, as a motion to choose a site failed in a 4-3 vote, with board president John Phelan and board members Sharon Patchak-Layman and Jackie Moore voting in favor of choosing a site that evening. Ralph Lee, Tom Cofsky, Jeff Weissglass and Steven Gevinson voted against choosing a site at this time.
The decision came after two-plus year’s worth of work by various internal school committees, an outside consulting firm hired to study the current pools, and several draft plans by school architects for a new pool facility — work that appears all but abandoned now. With a decision now delayed indefinitely, the original goal of breaking ground on a new facility by next summer also appears unlikely.
D200 board members, meanwhile, voted unanimously to establish a board committee to study whether a site decision can be made in time to run a referendum in next year’s spring election concerning how to pay for a new facility. The possibility of issuing debt to pay for the facility via a ballot referendum, as well as paying a portion out of existing reserves, are options the board and administration is considering.
The committee is expected to report its findings before the end of the year, Phelan said, adding that three or more board members will sit on this new committee. Many of the speakers, including the OPRF swimmers, urged the school to make a decision sooner than later. That decision will come later, but when remains up in the air.
Just before voting on the motion, board members made statements on their preferred locations.
Phelan said he felt that a decision should be made that evening. Since there’s no consensus now on any one site, Phelan warned that the board likely won’t come to any consensus later, even if the process is delayed another six or eight months.
Patchak-Layman remains firm on building on the parking garage site along Lake Street. Weissglass was leaning that way as well, but the results of a parking study commissioned by the board had him rethinking that location. He also still wants to investigate the option of fixing up the current pools. Moore also viewed the parking garage as the best option for causing the least amount of disruption to students over the other sites.
But if the garage is chosen, Moore wants the district to also figure out a parking solution for OPRF staff and the community that use the Lake Street garage. Both Lee and Gevinson said they have their own site options. Lee favors a redo and reconfiguration of the current pools. Gevinson wants a reconfiguration of the baseball fields, as well as the football field and building the pool facility just north of that new space.
Cofsky said he wasn’t ready to indentify any site that evening.
But among the speakers that evening was Lisa Parker Weisman, Jocelyn’s mother.
She, like other swimming stakeholders, said OPRF’s pools are the most substandard of their peer districts. She also noted that other residents in the community also use OPRF’s current, cramped pools.
“A pool is an asset for a community — for young kids having swim lessons in the mornings, for old ladies swimming laps at night — I think, really is, a gem for a community,” she said.
CONTACT: tdean@wjinc.com