For a decade, pupils at the Ana Roque De Duprey Elementary School, housed in the former St. Fidelis Catholic School in Humboldt Park, have had to use a chapel for assemblies and travel 20 minutes a day to a Chicago Park District field house for gym class.
Most of its 478 pupils endure round-trip bus rides of an hour per day. It doesn’t appear that will change anytime soon, according to the Chicago Public Schools.
During a public meeting organized by Duprey’s principal and parents Tuesday night at the Kosciuszko Park fieldhouse, a Board of Education representative said while a replacement for Duprey is needed, there isn’t enough money available to build a new school right now.
Tim Martin, director of operations for the public schools, told the approximately 100 parents, teachers and pupils at the meeting that while there is a need for a new school in the area, other parts of the city have pressing needs too. He told the group that school officials hope to begin construction of a new school to replace Duprey within three years, if funds are appropriated by the Illinois legislature.
Martin said the public schools have identified some $4 billion in capital needs but that only $3 billion is available to meet those needs.
Duprey, at 1405 N. Washtenaw Ave., is 94 percent Hispanic and serves primarily as overload relief for several crowded neighborhood elementary schools on the Northwest Side, including Barry, Mozart, Nixon, Monroe, Lloyd, Funston and Nobel. Three Duprey pupils began the Tuesday meeting by reading a list of facilities that they would like to have but don’t: a gym, a music room, an art room, a computer lab and an assembly hall.
“It is not about a building,” Duprey Principal Gloria Roman said at the meeting. “It’s about equal access and educational opportunities for our children. Our children have to compete with children who have a full school experience. Our children have been deprived of that for the past 10 years. We have already graduated one generation of students (in temporary facilities). How many more will graduate before we have a new school?”
The public schools have leased the former St. Fidelis School from the Archdiocese of Chicago for a decade, using a series of one-year contracts. Declining enrollment forced the diocese to close St. Fidelis in 1989.
Ald. Vilma Colom (35th) told the group that the board was considering a site at Wrightwood and Keeler Avenues in Ald. Ray Suarez’s 31st Ward.
Martin said that particular site was “controlled” by one of the school board’s bus companies. He confirmed that school officials were tentatively “looking at a site” and would be willing to work with area aldermen to “protect it and discourage people from building on it.” However, he said there currently were no funds to purchase any site, and nothing was official or finalized.