Tony Riccardi said he took a School District 30 tour of Northbrook’s Maple School Saturday to decide whether he backed plans for a $36.3 million referendum that would raze and rebuild the school.
“Do we need another school?” he asked beforehand. “Do we need to spend the money, or not?”
On the way out, he said he’d made his decision.
“They absolutely need a new school,” said Riccardi, who builds large public buildings for a living. “There’s not enough room for the kids, the facilities are pretty rough and in disrepair.”
Riccardi, a vice president of Gurnee’s Wm. A. Randolph contractors, said he had no interest in the Maple project but instead wanted to know more about the proposal he and other Northbrook residents would see on the April 4 ballot.
He and a group of other residents had just spent an hour walking through the school at 2370 Shermer Road on a tour led by the Northbrook/Glenview district’s superintendent, Brian Wegley, and Maple’s principal, Nate Carter. The tour was the last of 14 sponsored by the district.
Though Wegley and Carter, as district employees, pledged not to say anything that would be classified as electioneering for the April 4 ballot measure, they were clear in their disdain for the condition of the school, which has received 13 additions since its core building was erected in 1949.
“Every week, there’s some disruption” of education caused by the condition of the building, Carter said. “Last week, on three days, there was no heating in some parts of the building.”
They described leaks and the difficulty of balancing climate control with 37 rooftop units.
“It’s either (too) hot or cold in this space,” Carter said of one of the two gyms.
“Obviously this space has received some water, you can tell by the smell here,” he continued, adding, “We’d love to have a fall play and a spring musical, but we can’t do that because we need this space for physical education.”
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The solution in the new building would be a big new gym and a “cafetorium,” a combination cafeteria and assembly room.
When the visitors had entered the building Saturday, Carter told them its design was inadequate for checking people as they came in.
“From a safety standpoint, it’s tough because we can’t always see who’s coming in the building,” he said. He said there wasn’t adequate privacy in the hallway that houses the school’s psychologist, nurse’s office and speech and language pathologist.
Wegley mentioned an addition that closed a circle around a transformer erected in 1975.
Heavy rains occasionally cause the grassy area surrounding the machine to flood, but the district has shied from digging a trench, Wegley said, for fear of disturbing an underground power line. So, he said, they make do with sandbags.
“The hallway here has flooded three times since I’ve been here,” Carter said. “I’ve been here eight years.”
A retrofit to solve the problems will cost about $250,000, Wegley said, if the building stays.
The tour also pointed out what officials said were cramped lockers, as well as art, choir and music rooms.
Carter said a learning space being used for science instruction had “no water, very little electricity.”
“And no gas,” Wegley added.
Cracks have developed on entrance overhangs and tuckpointing is needed, Wegley said.
By the numbers, the referendum request, if approved, would pay for most of the costs of a $41.5 million project, with $40.6 million for the new Maple, and $878,000 for the district’s primary schools, Wescott and Willowbrook. $5.2 million would come from surpluses.
If the referendum request fails, leaders say catching up would mean spending $15 million on the old building, paid for with $10.7 million in non-referendum bonds. In addition, they estimate, taxpayers would pay another $10 million on it over the next 30 years.
As the tour group left a boys’ room where the sink stanchions were rusty, Northbrook resident John Burke said, “That’s not Northbrook.”
After the tour, he said that he supported the referendum, as did Newgard and Riccardi, who echoed Burke.
“They’ve managed to keep up the standards in this school for years,” Riccardi said. “Could they do it for another 30 years? Probably. I can make the argument, we live in a nice town, and we should have facilities that reflect that.”
Twitter @IrvLeavitt