For more than 15 years, Oak Park and River Forest High School has been struggling to figure out what to do about its now 90-year-old, outdated and inadequate pools. Although the pools were barely mentioned when I ran for the school board in 2013, the board has been immersed in trying to solve this problem for most of my tenure.
Our mission is to provide a dynamic, supportive learning environment that cultivates knowledge, skills, and character and strives for equity and excellence. While providing high-quality facilities is important to the mission, the pool conversations have been taking a disproportionate amount of the board, administration, and community time and effort. Solving this problem is critical.
We have learned a great deal over the last few months, and I believe that, working together as a community, we have a good chance of resolving this dilemma. We are preparing for community conversations on the pool in early April, and I am writing to provide some history and an update on our plans.
The pools play an essential role in our physical education curriculum, with nearly 500 freshmen and sophomores receiving swim instruction every day. In 2012, the district, with the help of the Stantec Consulting firm, concluded that a single 8-lane “stretch” pool, to be built on campus, was the best long-term solution. A stretch pool is approximately 40 meters long and would accommodate both the PE and athletic needs of the school. In addition, operation and maintenance of a single pool would be more cost effective than having duplicate mechanical systems.
When I joined the board, the search for a site to build this single pool had begun. During the course of those conversations, the board learned that adding another 10 meters to create a 50-meter pool would add about 10% to the cost while adding 20% more water. We believed this would help support growing enrollment, provide increased opportunity for community use, and help retain OPRF’s place as a highly desirable public high school. With that in mind, we continued the search for a site based on the assumption of the larger pool.
Regardless of whether the pool would be 40 meters or 50 meters, identifying a location was very difficult. After believing we had examined all possible options, the board decided in April of 2015 to replace the pools with a 50-meter pool on the site of the parking garage. That plan would also have allowed us to recapture the vacated pool space to help accommodate the significant enrollment growth the school is experiencing.
That approach depended on the development of a parking plan to accommodate the lost spots. A preliminary study of the surrounding area led us to believe that developing such a plan was feasible and could be accomplished by creating staff permit parking on streets in the surrounding neighborhood. We were always concerned, however, with the impact on neighborhood traffic and parking, and the safety of students, faculty, and staff, including whether the plan could address issues of snow and ice.
We were still working on the parking plan when we acted in November 2015 to fund the project with working cash bonds. Those bonds were challenged by a citizen-led petition drive and were subsequently withdrawn by the board.
During the petition process, community members expressed three major concerns about the project: the parking situation; the estimated cost of the project (which had risen sharply during the extended search for a site); and a belief that a project of this size and scope should be decided directly by referendum.
Reflecting on what we had learned, we realized a piece of our analysis was incomplete. We know that renovating the pools in place and complying with modern health and safety standards would require a gut rehab. The result would be pools that are 18% smaller and do not have enough lanes to host any swim meets. The estimated cost to achieve that very sub-optimal outcome is $19 million. On the other hand, the plan that we approved would provide a high-quality facility that meets all of the school’s needs and offers significant opportunity for community use. The cost, however, is $37.5 million and the loss of 300 parking spots. A critical question we heard is: “Isn’t there something in between?”
Back in 2005, the school considered options to replace one pool with an 8-lane, 25-yard pool and renovate the second pool in place. That option, which involved removal of load bearing walls, was rejected as being too expensive. That decision is in part what led to the Stantec recommendation in 2013 that a one-pool solution was best.
The other options
Given the high cost of the one-pool alternative, we are revisiting the possibility of maintaining two pools, the larger of which would be an 8-lane, 25-yard, competition-size pool. We expect to have preliminary designs developed for this concept, along with cost estimates, in the next few weeks.
We are also working with the Park District of Oak Park on their community center feasibility study, which will determine whether a shared, off-campus, community pool is possible.
In addition, we continue to work on a parking plan with respect to the current option of a 50-meter pool on the garage site. Finally, we are aware of a few ideas that may still prove to be viable options and will include them in the community conversations if they appear to be reasonably feasible.
In early April, we will hold community conversations to share what we’ve learned and to explore together the pros and cons of all options. We are working with an independent consultant to plan these meetings. Our hope is to build a consensus, if possible, and if not, at least be sure we have identified the major tradeoffs as we move to a community decision on which path to take.
I look forward to our community meetings in April, which will be publicized broadly. In the meantime, we have updated the pool project section of the OPRF website, including a history of all the options that have been considered over the last three years. In addition, the board continues to appreciate feedback on our plans and efforts. The best way to reach us is by email at boe@oprfhs.org.
Jeff Weissglass is president of the District 200 Board of Education at Oak Park and River Forest High School.