After nearly a decade of work, Pennoyer School District 79 in Norridge cut the ribbon on the newest additions to its lone school building.
“This has definitely been a journey,” Superintendent Kristin Kopta told attendees at the Jan. 29 ceremony. “What you’re going to see tonight is old and new coming together in designed spaces that we designed just for our students.”
She called the space a difficult one to bring to life.
“We had some hiccups along the way,” she told parents, school and district staff, and others who crowded inside the gymnasium.
“Teachers, parents, students and so many others never gave up,” said school board President Sheila Watchholder. “We were determined to pursue and overcome any objectives.”
The district is not yet done. Kopta said the ribbon cutting capped the first phase but two more phases remain. Still, the school chief said the hardest part of the ongoing capital improvement journey is over: Getting money to pay for it.
That Jan. 29 day was a long time in coming, officials acknowledge.
For nearly a decade, District 79 officials waged a public relations battle, begging at the ballot box for taxpayers to approve a bond-issue referendum. That effort failed six times. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the school building shuttered in 2020 and 2022, teacher positions and programming got cut due to a lack of funds.
But, finally in 2023, a $10 million bond referendum was successful.
At the ribbon cutting ceremony – which included a tour of the upgraded spaces – administrators, students, parents and others from the greater community shuffled up and down stairs, down hallways to see new art and music classrooms. They passed through learning hubs, lockers, bathrooms and on.
Lights were bright, paint on the walls gleamed and unscuffed and furniture filled the spaces between. The whole space smelled fresh and new.
In one of the larger learning hubs, teacher Annie Saperstein smiled, directing adults and answering questions.
“There’s a lot more room to learn here,” she said. “We love the new music and arts rooms and, really, it’s nice to have all the learning space.”
Teachers were a part of the capital improvement process. They weighed in on the plans and spaces, asking for large, open rooms with rows of plate windows, according to officials.
Art teacher Alana Wood stood beside easels and art projects hanging on the walls and displayed on shelves. The space included long tables, chairs and room to build. Perched on the second floor, the windows in the room overlooked the schoolyard and stared into the sky.
“It’s fantastic,” Wood said about the space. “I’m beyond grateful.”
She described the old art room as almost an afterthought, wedged between some other rooms and tucked deep inside the building.
“It was an interior room so it didn’t have any windows,” she said. “There’s more space here, and it’s flexible space.”
The art space opens up into the music room, another large room that had ukuleles on the wall and drums arranged on the floor. Students will be able to jam to sounds born around the world while their friends next door make art.
“Our students and our teachers, they can come together to collaborate and create,” Kopta told the crowd early in the evening.
Pennoyer, the only school in District 79, enrolls some 450 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Watchholder called the school a cornerstone of the community.
“Just as our new addition has a strong foundation, our students will have a strong foundation as they become the new leaders,” the school board president said. “It will be a welcoming, modern space where children can learn concepts for years to come.”
Jesse Wright is a freelancer.
