The Forest Park Recreation Board used to oversee the operations of four village-owned pocket parks spread across the village. But when the village finally decided to transfer the responsibility for those four patches of green to the Park District of Forest Park, the rec board was effectively left without a mission.
Because a board is a terrible thing to waste, though, it has been reinvented as the village’s fun and games/feel good committee. Its members organize the annual community cleanup, plans for Arbor Day, and last year, held the first ever “pumpkin smash” — an all-fun shortcut to composting “used” pumpkins.
Now this board of five is looking to reach its full strength of seven with an invitation to community residents to join in the fun.
Amy Binns-Calvey, chair of the rec board, is enthusiastic about the place of fun, honor and community-building in the life of the village.
“It just gives me such a thrill to see, you know, the impact people can have,” she told the Review.
The board meets monthly and Binns-Calvey says village staff has been very supportive of each of its initiatives from the village administrator to the public works chief.
It is easy to apply on the village’s website. So join in.
Shakespeare’s back
The intrepid Forest Park Theatre is back for its fourth season of Shakespeare in the park. More specifically in The Grove at Altenheim.
This village is lucky that, when Richard Corley moved to Forest Park a few years back, the head of the theater program at the University of Illinois Chicago noticed how diverse and welcoming the village is and also that it no longer had a theater company.
This weekend and next, the troupe will perform Pericles, which Corley describes as “an adult fairy tale.” All the performances are free.
ESL at Proviso schools
Call it innovative. Call it desperate. But the District 209 Proviso Township high schools have a seeming solution in place for the new school year to teach the burgeoning number of its students who need English language learning.
That solution is a combination of virtual and in-person teaching by two national entities, which provide specialty teachers to districts that are unable to make hires directly. We all recall the very mixed results of Zoom teaching during COVID. So this is far from ideal.
However, the district currently has eight unfilled openings for ESL/Bilingual teachers and another 10 open spots for bilingual para-professionals. Those posts have been budgeted. So the roughly $1 million cost of the outside contacts is not an added cost. There are two questions. Will this virtual teaching be effective for the more than 1,000 D209 students whose primary language is not English? And, no guarantee, can the two virtual teaching companies find teachers to hire?