Dear District 58 Families,
Last month, the Board of Education and I mailed a letter and flyer to all District 58 residents with information about our facility needs and a potential proposal to address these needs. If you didn’t receive or haven’t had a chance to read these messages, I encourage you to please take a look:
Recent Facility Mailers:
- View the mid-February facility letter.
- View the mid-February facility flyer.
- View the mid-March facility flyer.
The original email mistakenly linked the March flyer to the February link; to clarify, we are linking both flyers above.
We will be mailing two more messages to residents: a facility trifold newsletter next week and a facility mail-in (and electronic) survey in mid-March.
In addition, we will host four facility community meetings this month. If you are interested in learning more about District 58’s facility needs and proposal, I encourage you to attend. All four meetings will cover the same content, and the format will be: Tour - Presentation - Q&A.
Facility Community Meeting Schedule:
- Thursday, March 3 from 6:30-8 p.m. at Herrick Middle School, 4435 Middaugh Ave.
- Saturday, March 5 from 9-10:30 a.m. at O'Neill Middle School, 635 59th St.
- Thursday, March 10 from 6:30-8 p.m. at O'Neill Middle School
- Saturday, March 12 from 9-10:30 a.m. at Herrick Middle School
The presentation and an FAQ document will be posted online after the meetings. If you have questions regarding our facility plans, please complete this question form. District 58 will use submitted questions to inform our future FAQ document. If you have feedback regarding our facilities, we encourage you to complete a facility survey later this month. District 58 will mail a paper survey and offer an electronic survey seeking facility feedback in mid-March.
Finally, we recently produced a four-part video series on the state of District 58’s facilities. The videos are only 2-3 minutes each and summarize our facility needs and plans. I encourage you to please view and share these videos!
District 58 Facility Videos
- Video 1: District 58's Facility Needs
- Video 2: Facility Maintenance and Renovation
- Video 3: Safety and Health
- Video 4: Moving Sixth Grade to the Middle School
As shared in video 1 above, District 58 strives to be fiscally responsible. Before potentially asking taxpayers to support a potential referendum, the District completed several fiscal housekeeping actions to minimize the potential bond proposal request. One of these actions was selling the Longfellow Center to a developer for $4.155 million in January 2022. We created a short video that shows Longfellow’s current condition (as of January 2022) and explains why District 58 decided to sell the property. Please click here to view the Longfellow At a Glance video.
Thank you, District 58 community, for taking the time to learn more about District 58’s facilities and our community-driven proposal to improve our schools. Please visit www.dg58.org/facility-planning to learn more.
Sincerely,
Dr. Kevin Russell
Superintendent of Schools