The Wildwood Elementary School in the Edgebrook neighborhood teaches kids from kindergarten through 8th grade. The mayor's office says they are a level 1 school, the highest performance rating. The mayor says they have achieved this success despite severe overcrowding. They have 423 students in a school that was built for about half of that number.
This is the 2nd announcement of a new school capital announcement in two days from the mayor. On Sunday, the mayor announced a new school will be built on the city's Southeast Side.
"If you put the three things together, involved parents, teachers that motivate, and a principal who's not scared to be accountable, wants to be accountable for results, I don't care where that child is, I don't care where they were raised, they will succeed. Wildwood is proof of that," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
"Hopefully there will be a library in the plan, a lunchroom, a teachers' lounge, and it will ease a lot of the overcrowding," said Veronica El Shami, parent.
A big cheer went up in the room Monday when the mayor made the announcement. The addition will be completed by the start of the 2015 school year and will cost about $15 million. The money, the mayor says, will come from state capital improvement funds.
