Opinion

OUR VIEW

D91 grows as it shrinks

It’s a neat trick to close a neighborhood school and have the early responses of impacted parents and teachers be hosannas and not curdled doubts and worries.

That appears to be what Forest Park’s District 91 elementary schools have accomplished. The decision last spring to close Grant-White School at Circle and Randolph, an intermediate grade center for the north side of town, was met with concern and a fair nostalgia for those who had invested in this school, who had brought their kids there each day. Those connections, happily, were profound.

However, no reasonable person can look at the hemorrhaging enrollment statistics at D91 over a decade and support a status quo response.

The decision, urged by the still-new administration of Supt. Elizabeth Alvarez and ratified by the school board, reflected the intersecting issues of the costs of running a school with so few students at Grant-White and the challenges of maintaining a community of teachers and families with such small numbers of students.

The hard solution was to close Grant-White and combine its constituency of teachers and families with those already at FieldStevenson Intermediate School at 925 Beloit. Would the decision rankle and divide, or could it — properly, empathetically and enthusiastically handled — create new energy and possibilities?

Well, it’s early. We’re about a week into the new school year. But the reporting of the Review’s Igor Studenkov at an open house last week at Field-Stevenson is more than encouraging. Conversations with newly arrived teachers brought broadly positive comments about feelings of welcome and team building. Principal Susan Bogdan was repeatedly singled out for her inclusive efforts.

Parents we talked with were also positive about the transition. While expressing sadness at losing Grant-White as their home school, parents also cited the smoothness of the transition from an administrative standpoint and the welcoming atmosphere their kids were feeling in the first days of the year.

Hard decisions made. Executing on the details. Understanding the potential that this merged choice can offer.

District 91 has more tough decisions ahead as it works to hopefully begin to gain enrollment momentum. And that will be more fun than this example of well-managed consolidation.

Things we like

Last week’s Garage Galleries was an unqualified hit. This gathering of 70 artists, mostly local, displaying their art in 28 spruced-up garages across the village is so fabulously Forest Park. It resonates on every front. Grassroots. Welcoming. Diverse. Fun. Unexpected.

Kudos to the Forest Park Arts Alliance for this perfect creation.

Our Tom Holmes writes this week about the concept that Forest Park ought to “own Halloween.” Casket Races. Cemetery tours. The Scarecrow Project. The library deep into it. Trick-or-Treat on Madison. So many dead people — can it really be close to 800,000? !

Here’s our conclusion. Forest Park already owns Halloween. Now it is up to the many organizations already involved to simply claim it and promote the hell out of it.

OPINION

Time to reframe Forest Park’s identity statement?

For almost all of the 40 years I’ve lived here, our village has officially promoted itself as having big city access and small town charm. That, of course, is no longer sufficiently descriptive, nor does it market who we are very well.

“Big city access” seems to imply that Forest Park is a place to leave and the city, with all its attractions, is the place to go to. Now the reverse is happening. People are coming from Chicago to Forest Park.

I checked city stickers on the windshields of the cars in Living Word’s parking lot, for example, and half of the thousands who worship there every Sunday are from the city. Meanwhile, Madison Street has become a destination. Chicago TV stations have done segments on Accents by Fred, Brown Cow and Escape Factor, and Augie Aleksy was just featured in the Trib. One columnist called Forest Park “the new Wicker Park.”

The word “charm” might still apply to a degree, but to my ear that’s a little too quaint to accurately describe the creative, cooperative energy I feel all around town.

My problem in trying to come up with a new, marketable identity statement is that the words I play around with are always inadequate to describe the many facets of our relatively small town.

Facet One, ShowerUp. Our village is small enough to identify needs and respond more quickly than big cities. The library, community center and village officials partnered with Loyola, Housing Forward and the Night Ministry to provide showers for homeless folks in a village-owned parking lot at the end of the Blue Line.

“Charm” is not the word to describe that facet. First, our village is experiencing big-city issues like homelessness and gun violence, and second, we are marshalling resources in ways that require big-city savvy and skill.

Facet Two, Garage Galleries. “You gotta check out the special section on Garage Galleries in the Review,” I said to my wife. “The quality of art and the number of artists working under the radar in this town is amazing.”

Facet Three, seven drag queens. I happened to be eating breakfast with John Corzine, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a month ago, and when I told him about the pride event in Constitution Court where 300 folks watched seven drag queens perform, this guy who keeps company with big shots on Wall Street was impressed. “Charm” is not the right word to capture the magic that happened that evening. Facet Four, Salvatore Stella is a whitecollar professional who identifies himself as a blue-collar guy. He, in some ways, embodies the sensibility of this town. The number of residents over 25 years old with college degrees is 51%, yet like Stella, who has a bachelor’s degree from DePaul, most of us are not afraid to get our hands dirty doing manual work. In fact, now that I

TOM think of it, we find it enjoyable. Facet Five, race and religion. Forest HOLMES Home Cemetery was established in 1876 and is “populated” with a diversity of residents, including the Haymarket martyrs, Roma and lots of Germans. Lately residents along Jackson Boulevard frequently witness long funeral processions with predominantly Black folks coming from the city. In a way, the cemeteries create a metaphor for the character of our town. According to the Forest Park Historical Society, German Waldheim (aka Forest Home) was advertised in the 1870s as a non-denominational “final resting place to all persons of all beliefs, backgrounds, ethnic race, or Fraternal association.” This is in contrast to Oak Park which promotes itself as being progressive, which it now is, but in the early 1900s, the town tried to prevent the Catholic Archdiocese from buying land to build a church, and in the 1950s Oak Park Temple, a Jewish synagogue, had to purchase the land they now own through a third party. Here, our village became 27% Black with almost no one resisting the demographic change or making a big ideological deal about it. Our living population is as diverse as our dead one. Facet Six, the Progress Center, L’Arche, and Empowering Gardens are all located here. Facet Seven, paradoxical complexity. We tend to vote Democratic, but progressive Kina Collings almost primaried moderate Danny Davis. We have white-collar demographics but blue-collar sensibilities. Most of our business owners don’t live here and most of our residents don’t work here, but somehow both cohorts love the community. So if the old brand no longer fits right, what words would you put together in a one-minute elevator speech that includes all of the above facets? “Big City Access and Small Town Charm,” catchy and short. See if you can reframe our evolved identity in just seven words.

Don’t overlook the bene ts of stress

We can all agree these are stressful times. We are being rocked by political and economic turmoil. Stress is such an enemy, we do what we can to relieve it. We knit and color and take yoga. Some resort to consuming pills and alcohol.

But what if a certain degree of stress is good for us? That’s the belief of Irish psychologist Ian Robertson.

In a Tribune article, Robertson claims that job worries, money problems and social difficulties can make our brains work better. He says, “The brain needs to be challenged to be improved.” He tested his theory on subjects in their 70s. Those who had recently suffered stressful events had less memory loss. Moderate stress sharpens our memory, while severe stress impairs it.

Another example involves people with back pain. Those who had been subjected to stress were better equipped to deal with the pain and become productive again. Those who hadn’t were more likely to rely on painkillers and be slower to resume normal activities.

As parents, we attempt to protect our kids from stress. We don’t place them in demanding situations, where they may fail. However, kids who haven’t been tested by stress are more likely to become depressed. Sometimes when we’re trying to shield our kids, we’re actually holding them back. Some parents won’t allow their kids to walk to the park. They also have kids ride JOHN buses rather than walk the short distance to school. We’re RICE not doing our kids any favor if we don’t toughen them up a bit. Speaking of students, I was talking to a college professor, who told me many of her students prefer to learn remotely. They got a taste of this during the pandemic. Now they prefer staying home and learning through Zoom. To me, there’s no substitute for in-person learning. It’s also very tough on teachers to have half their class in-person and the other half on a computer screen. As for adults, Robertson recommends relieving stress by setting modest goals. It could be something as simple as taking a walk. He encourages us to rejoice in small accomplishments. There are also some physical exercises we can do. Robertson has clients take five long deep breaths to change their brain chemistry. We can also re-boot our brain by squeezing our right hand for a minute or so.

Just the simple act of standing up straight can relieve our anxiety. Robertson said we can prepare ourselves for stressful situations, by imagining them in advance. If we have to confront a co-worker, we can imagine how uncomfortable it’s going to make us feel. Then, when we’re actually facing the situation, we can use relaxing techniques to cope.

Can you imagine a life without any stress? Sounds boring, right? A social worker said that if we didn’t have any stress, we’d sit and eat and watch TV. I believe some of us are doing this. However, those of us who are feeling overloaded by stress should find ways to reduce it. Stress causes weight gain, for example, because it slows our metabolism. It can also weaken our immune system. It can kill us, rather than make us stronger.

The best stress-reliever for me is taking walks. While I’m walking, part of me feels that I should be returning phone calls or listening to music. The other part thinks that walking is entertaining enough and that being alone with my thoughts is a good thing. We’re fortunate to live in a very walkable community and I have many chance encounters with people I know.

Serendipity beats stress every time.

A L OOK BA CK IN TIME

Village halls, past and present

In 1974 bids were received for the demolition and reconstruction of Forest Park Village Hall on Desplaines Avenue and an addition to the fire station for a second floor. The original village hall served the community for 60 years. It was dedicated in 1915 by Mayor Henry J. Mohr. His grandson, Mayor Howard R. Mohr dedicated the current village hall in 1975.

Jill Wagner

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