A friend of McHenry County Blog has been wondering for months why there is a For Sale sign beside Oak Ridge Alternative School.
So, when I talked with District 300 School Board President Joe Stevens at the annual Algonquin-Lake in the Hills Christmas party at the Brubaker household, I asked him about it.
It’s a big district, so any relatively new school board member can be excused for not knowing all of the nuances.
Stevens didn’t know about the school’s being for sale, but said he would check it out for me.
Here’s what the information his look see revealed:
“There is indeed a for sale sign on the land where the Oak Ridge Alternative School sits and the land is technically for sale.
“It seems that several years ago, long before I was on the BOE, the Board at that time decided to sell the land in hopes of making enough money to purchase the Summit School to move Oak Ridge into it. Oak Ridge as you know, is really several trailers somehow strapped together and at some point will need to be placed in a more permanent structure.
”However, since the idea of selling the land came up, the BOE in place prior to the most recent election, when I was on it, had the opportunity to purchase Summit School and decided not to pursue it.
“We did look at the potential but found that the building would need massive change to meet the current life safety code, Americans with Disabilities laws etc. It became not only cost prohibitive, but likely more expensive to remodel it than to build new. At that time the entire idea of moving Oak Ridge out of their ‘temporary’ home was shelved.
”The BOE however forgot to remove the for sale sign.
“Due to our conversation, it will be discussed at a near future BOE meeting to officially have the sign taken down and the property taken off the market. There has been NO activity on a possible sale at all.
”Mystery solved.”
Summit School is a private school on Route 72 that serves special needs kids.
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The picture is of Carpentersville District 300 School Board President Joe Stevens. The building with the For Sale sign is Oak Ridge Alternative School.