Crew 'Tearing Up' Front Of Elmhurst School, Disappointing Board Leader

ELMHURST, IL – Elmhurst school officials hope to solve a decades-long drainage problem at a local school once and for all. And they said it needs to be done now.

However, the school board's president said this week she was disappointed that the school district planned to do the work at Sandburg Middle School during the school year. She noted she has a child at the school.

"I just wanted to express my disappointment because I feel like we've known about this for a year and that our consultants outlined work to be done," President Athena Arvanitis said at a meeting of the board's finance committee. "Here we are right before fall talking about tearing up the front of the building."

Over the summer, the district worked on the drainage project, but uncovered a related problem that needed addressing. Officials decided to let the school year start so that things could settle before the work began.

The project includes digging a nine-foot hole in front of the school's main entrance and closing the auditorium, officials said. The work was set to start this week and last six weeks under the worst-case scenario.

Officials said the school's basement has flooded for years during significant rainstorms.

"Some of the basement staff may have been dealing with this for a long time and wanted to make sure that they felt like they were seen and heard and we were taking care of an issue that they've been plagued with," said Leo Cassidy, the district's operations director.

Joe Blomquist, assistant superintendent of finance, conceded some construction noise may cause "minor disruptions" to classrooms.

"But I can say when these really heavy rains come, that's a disruption to the learning environment," he said.

Board member Courtenae Trautmann appeared to defend the administrators.

"I don't want the community to think that we've been sitting on this project for the next phase for a year," she said.

She said the district was unaware of the project's next phase until it uncovered the problem in the last phase.