Messes Avoided At Elmhurst School, Thanks To Completed Work: Official

ELMHURST, IL – A disaster avoided may not always be celebrated. People just go about their business.

That's apparently the case at Sandburg Middle School in Elmhurst.

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For years, storms have meant flooding in the school's basement.

But work over the summer and into the fall appears to have changed that.

"We did experience some heavy rains, and we did not have any water come into the building and in the spots where it had been coming in for the last few years," Leo Cassidy, the Elmhurst school district's operations director, told a school board committee. "(We) feel very good about the work that happened."

He said the district also has identified necessary storm drain repairs at Churchville Middle School, which is dealing with similar issues. Work is planned for next year.

In Churchville's case, Cassidy said the district better understands what's happening with the pipes. So the district feels confident "we're able to knock that out," he said.

Over the summer, the district worked on the Sandburg drainage project but uncovered a related problem that needed to be addressed. Officials decided to let the school year start so that things could settle before the work began.

The project included digging a nine-foot hole in front of the school's main entrance and closing the auditorium, officials said.

At a September board meeting, the school board's president, Athena Arvanitis, who has a child at Sandburg, said she was disappointed that a school-year project would apparently disrupt operations.

Patch wrote about the different views on the project.