It is good to see the long-underutilized Grant White School about to be put back to use for an educational purpose. The District 91 Forest Park elementary school board has signed off on a lease with Oak Park and River Forest High School, which will use much of the shuttered school’s first floor to house its program for older students with special needs.
The high school will, over the next year, shift its CITE program from its current location at the River Forest Community Center into the much larger space at Grant White. CITE, which stands for Community Integration Transition Education, is for young adults ages 18 to 22 who require Individualized Education Program services, vocational training and therapeutic support. When the program is fully shifted to Grant White, it will be home base for 50-some students and just under 20 staff members.
We understand that District 91 wants to maintain ownership of the school it closed in 2022 due to troublingly low enrollment. We understand it does not want to sign an overlong lease, which would limit its options. The agreement with OPRF runs through June 2028 and could be extended. And we think that District 200 is a very worthy tenant.
That said, we remain curious about the Forest Park district’s mid-term plans for this valued site. There has been interest from both Forest Park’s village government and its park district for a lease arrangement for locally focused programming.
We will watch to see what comes next.
Safety at the end of the line
Mayor Rory Hoskins is all-in on a legislative effort to merge the Chicago region’s multiple commuter transit operations into a single entity. The so-called Metropolitan Mobility Authority Act would bring together the CTA, Metra and the Pace suburban bus system.
Integrating those entities makes sense on every level. Better planning, less duplication, shared services, more innovation and a regional mindset for a regional challenge is long overdue.
That said, given the nature of fiefdoms, the power of lobbyists and a predisposal to political inertia, we’re not expecting a resolution in the immediate term.
We’re more interested in Hoskins’ take that a shared effort would allow for a rebranding of mass transit, especially with a renewed focus on rider safety. He’s right that Forest Park is in the distinct position of being home to the terminuses of both the Blue Line and the Green Line. And with both train lines ending here, there are specific challenges around safety.
The village currently has an intergovernmental agreement with the CTA that allows local officers to sign on to provide security during off hours. But that is not a holistic solution to what is a genuine challenge.
So while a major transit merger is interesting, we need more immediate attention to safety in and around the CTA end-of-the-line stations in Forest Park.
