Under gray skies that soon gave way to rain, Skokie School District 73.5 leaders grabbed shovels last week for a quick groundbreaking ceremony signaling the real beginning of a major building construction project at Elizabeth Meyer School.
Cyndi Cohen, the district’s chief school business official, called the Feb. 28 start “phase two” of the major expansion of the school.
Meyer School, which serves pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, will double its size once an estimated $9 million addition is completed, officials said. The project at the school, as well as a one-room add-on at John Middleton Elementary School, are expected to be completed by the time school reopens next school year.
The Meyer School building expansion plans call for a one-story addition and a new library.
Seven new classrooms, including a room for art and music, a gross motor room for special education students and three small instructional offices, will be added to the building.
The addition is expected to total 23,000 square feet, according to planners.
Meyer School educators have said that there has been a space crunch at the school for some time and some activities have even been held in the hallways.
District 73.5 School Board President Gary Dolinko said the project is about much more than just building an addition.
One benefit district leaders say will come from the addition is that more special education students attending Malloy Education Center in Morton Grove can be taught at Meyer. Some students are currently educated out of district strictly because of limited space, said Supt. Kate Donegan.
Donegan estimated that 16 such students will be returned to Meyer once the addition is in place.
Meyer’s expanded space could also potentially generate revenue for the district by being used by special education students from other districts, she said.
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When the project was first announced, a small group of residents mounted a petition drive to make the district’s plans subject to a voter referendum last November. They were never able to get enough signatures and the petition effort proved unsuccessful.
Since then, the project has run smoothly, according to district officials, and is still on schedule and on budget.
The district is paying for the projects by selling $10.3 million in bonds, which officials say will not increase how much 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.
The first phase of the Meyer project included construction of a new stormwater detention system, which required a permit from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Through an intergovernmental agreement with the village of Skokie, an underground tank storage system was installed on the property, officials said.
In the next few weeks, drilling will take place to create 21 geothermal wells, Cohen said.
“We’re hoping the drilling doesn’t take too long,” she said. “There will be some noise and they’ll be running a generator.”
School district officials — including school board members — and some parents attended the Feb. 28 groundbreaking.
Meyer School Principal Alison Gordon held some students’ hands, pointed to a patch of wide open muddy land and told them it would look a lot different next school year.
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