Residents in Humboldt Park extracted a $1.2 million promise from school officials Wednesday that the broken windows and leaky roof in the community’s elementary school, which for two years have forced students to wear jackets while in class, will be fixed.
School officials made the promise during an energetic community meeting staged by Blocks Together, a neighborhood group based in West Humboldt Park.
A dozen children from Stowe School, 3444 W. Wabansia Ave., stood before the audience–some carrying “Don’t leave us out in the cold” signs and chanting “We want new windows.”
Tim Martin, of the Chicago Public Schools, told the crowd of approximately 150 people that the students would no longer suffer from chilly conditions inside the classrooms.
“No child should have to be cold while they are in a classroom trying to learn,” Martin said.
The school district will immediately install plexiglass as a temporary measure and in May will replace all windows and frames and fix the roof, Martin said.
Martin’s promise came as a surprise to those in the audience who said they have been complaining for at least two years about frigid air flowing into the classrooms through shattered windows and broken frames.
“We’re shocked that after two years of our griping and the school people doing nothing, that they finally agreed to this,” said Octavio Lopez, a member of Blocks Together who has three children at Stowe. “I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
Lopez and other members of Blocks Together said they began calling school officials last week asking that a school representative be sent to their meeting.
As late as Wednesday morning, they said, school officials said they were not sure if anyone would attend. Community members said they were never told that the school district planned to repair the windows.
Martin said school officials have been planning since September to repair windows in dozens of Chicago schools. He said Stowe was never on that “repair list” because school officials did not know Stowe was in need.
Martin said it wasn’t until he pulled a status report earlier this week on Stowe that school officials realized the 100-year-old school had never seen a major capital improvement project.
“We have more than 500 schools and we don’t always know about the problems unless we are alerted,” Martin said.
Regardless of the politics, Jessica Lopez, a 5th grader at Stowe, said she’s just happy to have a warm classroom. “I’m tired of being cold,” she said.