Well, it happened. One of two swimming pools at Oak Park and River Forest High School has been shut down. On the unequivocal advice of an engineering consultant hired by District 200 to inspect the “west pool,” the district closed it down about a month back.
With the engineer reporting the deck on one side of the pool was failing and that a “structural failure of the deck could cause a structural failure of the pool wall as well,” this was a simple if painful choice.
Another simple choice is that this pool which, along with the east pool, dates to 1928, is beyond repair or patching. That means after a decade of equivocation, missed opportunities, real and drummed up community angst, it is time for the school board and its administration to finally figure out the future of swimming classes, water safety and competitive swimming and diving at our local high school.
Indecision by multiple school boards allowed the ancient swimming pools to become a stand-in for productive discussion of the legitimate frustration of taxpayers over the school’s overtaxing of Oak Park and River Foresters.
Now as it contemplates Phase 2 of the massive Imagine OPRF remaking of the Scoville Avenue campus, the phase focused on the indoor athletic facilities on the south end of the building, it is past time to settle this matter.
As we said recently on this page, the necessary path to a decision is an open conversation with the community of just what is the school’s vision and the community’s desire for swimming pools at the school. Certainly it is not for some super-sized tub of a pool. Nor is it for some cheap updates of otherwise obsolete 93-year-old pools. What level of water safety is the school committed to teaching?
Plan for this conversation to take place this spring. And then settle on just what Phase 2 needs to include and how, also with controversy, it will be paid for.
Finally, decide. Just decide.