The first day of school is always big anywhere but in the case of Elizabeth Meyer School in Skokie, it’s twice as big this year.
Kindergarteners had their first day of school Aug. 31 and preschoolers were scheduled to arrive Sept. 5 — the day after Labor Day. Meyer has doubled its size since last year due to completion of a major new addition.
“It exceeded my expectations,” said Principal Alison . “It’s one thing to plan it for all these months, but another to see it. I have to see things to really know them.”
The new and improved Meyer School has a real gymnasium and library for the first time, a new playground and many other features. It now totals about 23,000 square feet, according to construction project planners.
In leading a tour of the building, Gordon and Skokie School District 73.5 Buildings and Grounds Director Marcus Holleran walked down a long hallway that pushes the school building further north. It’s difficult to see where the old hallway ends and the new one begins, so seamless is the appearance of the addition, school officials note.
“We had a few hairy moments as you do with any project this size, but we got there,” said Holleran a day before teachers were to arrive.
The addition has stayed on budget, Holleran said, at a cost of about $9 million although the official final tab is still not known. Meyer’s sister school, John Middleton Elementary School, was also expanded and now includes such things as a new multipurpose room.
But Meyer was by far the bigger project.
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The district is paying for the school additions after selling $10.3 million in bonds, which officials say will not increase how much property taxpayers pay in individual years because of how the bonds are structured.
Once 2007-2008 bonds that helped pay for an addition at Oliver McCracken Middle School are paid off in 2018, school district officials said, repayment of the new bonds will replace them over nine more years, allowing the district to maintain the same level of taxes.
Meyer’s one-story build-out includes seven new classrooms, including a room for art and music, a gross motor room for special education students and three small instructional offices, according to project plans.
While enrollment at School District 68 was never expected to increase, the addition does allow for more special education students attending Molloy Education Center in Morton Grove to be taught at Meyer, Supt. Kate Donegan said.
Some students have been educated out of district only because of limited space, she said.
Donegan has estimated that 16 such students will ultimately be returned to Meyer now that the addition is in place.
The new playground is filled with creative, unique equipment better suited for kindergarteners, preschoolers and especially those with special needs, Gordon said. When teachers arrived at school before school officially opened for the new year, they were scheduled to try out the playground pieces, she said.
“We have to see how everything works and establish new rules about how they’re used,” she said.
According to educators, the addition solves practical space crunch problems that had been issues for years. The school had a makeshift library and teachers’ lounge that shared space with other activities, Gordon said.
The lunchroom on the south end of the building served many purposes including doubling as a limited gymnasium. Certain classes and activities had to take place in the hallway, school officials said.
Less than six months ago, the district broke ground at the site. The project went full speed ahead over the summer, Holleran said.
The improvements are not only restricted to the inside. A new driving lane has been added on the north side of the building — where the addition is located — allowing for safer drop off and pick up of children, officials said.
Parents used to drop off and pick up children on the busier streets surrounding Meyer, Holleran said.