My old Grade School is closing after 113 years.

[XNASA]

http://www.looksmartfootball.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060202/ai_n16056035

I guess I'll attend the party this Saturday for former students. This makes me kinda sad. It's the only elementary school closing in the Chicago diocese this year.

:(

[tigereye]

1. sorry, X

:hug:

MIne is still there and is about the same vintage, I think.

[arwalden]

2. Whoopi Goldberg Needs To Go There...

... and become an incognito music teacher. She can start a kick-ass choir and enter the school in the All-State chorus competition. After a few local benefit and fund-raising concerts, they're off to the state finals! Then after they WIN the competition, the archdiocese officials will reconsider their decision to close the school.

Well... that's how it works in the movies.

Anyway... sorry to hear the sad news.

[XNASA]

4. It worked in the Blues Brothers too.

I'm sure the alumni getogether this weekend will be a lot of fun.

I wonder if the White twins are still smokin' hot?

[Richardo]

3. You should have paid those library fines.

:(

Sorry to hear that, XNASA...

[XNASA]

5. I tried to make up for it by attending the Smoker, every year....

...since we moved back to Chicago.

I actually donated all my winnings to the school one year. Guess it wasn't enough.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. That enrollment was really low.

My sister is principal of a Catholic grade school on the NW side and the archdiocese likes to close schools and then combine if enrollment numbers fall too much. I also suspect that with that few students, the school was running on a deficit -- another thing that gets them closed down.

Sorry about that. My old school (St. Gertrude) is now part of North Side Catholic Academy, a multi-campus school on the Far North side.

[XNASA]

7. I'd guess the enrollment was around 700 when I attended.

There were 2 classes of about 40 in all 8 grades, plus Kindergarten.

I can even remember new classrooms and a new library being built when I was there.

Yep. Time marches on, I 'spose.

[Reverend_Smitty]

8. My elementary school closed in 2001

It was open since 1900 and my grandfather, my father and all my uncles were students there when they were kids. When it closed up it felt like I lost a part of my family history. Now there isn't a single catholic school left in the city of Trenton, they all consolidated and are now part of the high school in the neighboring township. It's a very strange thing because there seems to be a catholic church on every corner in that city and 30 years ago the schools were filled to capacity...it's all due to the "white flight" and urban sprawl that has turned it into a gang infested shell of its former self

[Xithras]

9. It's always sad when important parts of our childhood vanish.

My elementary school closed about 10 years ago because it needed renovation and the district couldn't afford it. After receiving hundreds of complaints from people who had attended the old school, the district PROMISED to renovate and reopen the school when funds allowed. Four years later the entire property was sold to a developer, bulldozed, and most of it is under a subdivision today. I compared an old photograph of the school with a Google Earth image of the neighborhood about a year ago. The spot behind the cafeteria where I kissed Kelly Sousa in the 5th grade is now in somebodies house. The dumpsters, where I smoked my first cigarrette in the fourth grade, have given way to the middle of a street. The classroom I was sitting in when the crying teacher burst in and announced that the Challenger had exploded is now a backyard. The office, where mean old Mr Williams used to make us grab his desk while he took a paddle to our backsides, is now another street. The creek behind the school, where we used to catch pollywogs at lunchtime and many boyhood adventures were staged after school, is now a concrete lined drainage ditch.

It's funny, when I was a student there, I couldn't wait to get out of school. Now that the school is gone, I'd give anything just to spend another hour in the place as a kid again.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

10. Ohhhh

that happened in our town a few years ago and it really bothered me. Very, very old school. Paul Robeson attended school there. They were going to tear it down and make a parking lot, but they haven't yet.