Gone are the days when teachers sent pupils outside during class to pick the wild grapes growing behind a one-room schoolhouse on Roosevelt Road in West Chicago.
“What they didn’t know was that it was actually a math lesson,” said Fay Stone, a former teacher at McAuley School. “Because then they would have to measure and weigh how many grapes they had for the homemade jelly we made every year.”
Lessons from a simpler time are part of a modern curriculum at financially strapped West Chicago Elementary School District 33, which is looking to sell the historic schoolhouse.
Volunteers have been searching for a way to save McAuley School, which was built in 1835 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. But with no clear solution to the problem, saving the school will require money, benevolence and cooperation between agencies.
Voters approved an education referendum question last year, but the school district still projects a $237,000 deficit for the 2003-04 school year. Officials say the McAuley School land, a 1.8-acre tract at 1820 W. Roosevelt Rd., is worth $225,000.
“My commitment, as chief official of the school district, is to say we will sell this land by the end of this fiscal year,” said Supt. Jon Mink. “We need that revenue in our budget.”
Mink said the district cannot afford the cost of moving the building and the sale must be done before next year’s budget estimates are discussed early this year.
If the school is to be saved, officials must find a suitable location for the building and a way of paying for the move.
West Chicago and DuPage County Forest Preserve District officials have previously estimated it would cost $200,000 to move McAuley School to nearby Kline Creek Farm and restore it, but the forest preserve won’t pay for it, officials said. Other locations have been discussed, but so far none has proved suitable.
The school district has not used McAuley School for teaching its children since the building and its 22 pupils were consolidated into District 33 at the end of the 1991-92 school year.
According to Mink, the schoolhouse was rented at times to special education cooperatives, but for the most part it is used only for storage.
Stone, who began teaching at McAuley in 1959 with a room of 22 pupils, is spearheading a drive to save the school.
“Children, make the adults aware of your belief that we can save McAuley School,” Stone told a group of kids and adults last weekend at an open house. “If you’re successful, when you grow up you can say `I helped save McAuley School’ and keep it part of our history.”
Joan Lanter, a 6th-grade teacher in District 33, said she and others will meet with a staff member of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert staff to discuss ways to fund the preservation effort. “They have some ideas where some grant money is available,” said Lanter. “State and forest preserve funding is very tight right now.”
Mink hopes that a deep-pocketed benefactor catches wind of the effort to save the school and makes a large contribution.
“There is some interest, and people are willing, but so far no one has come forward with a check,” said Mink.
Mayor Mike Fortner said he would like to see McAuley School sited adjacent to the West Chicago Prairie, several hundred acres about a mile from the school’s current location.
“It’s close and would be an affordable place to move the school,” Fortner said. “It’s considered to be one of the best pieces of undisturbed prairie in northern Illinois.”
Currently, the West Chicago Prairie has no interpretive center.
