OPRF Campus Will Remain Open to Some, With Conditions

Freshmen at who were looking forward to being sophomores next year for off-campus lunch will have to wait a while longer.

The status quo will be out to lunch, literally.

After getting letters, e-mail and phone calls from residents for weeks about the merits of closing campus or allowing it to remain open, the District 200 school board weighed in for the first time Thursday.

Using a nonbinding straw vote, board members unanimously dropped the current policy that’s been in place since the 1990s – a closed campus for freshmen and open campus for sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Now, a majority of the board is leaning toward allowing juniors and seniors — under certain conditions —to leave campus during lunch.

Those conditions are likely to include reviews of student behavior, attendance, tardies, academic standing, parental permission and health.

The straw poll came after better than two hours of resident comment and board discussion at Thursday’s Policy, Evaluation and Goals committee.

Only a vote at a regular board meeting – and in some instances a special meeting - can set or change policy. That vote is scheduled during the next regular board meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m., May 26.

WHAT’S NEXT

That timeframe gives the administration more than two months to work out the logistics for next school year, which begins in late August.

School officials will install a security system to help monitor who can and cannot leave campus and upgrade security cameras.

Faculty who now provide hallway supervision may have to monitor the lunchroom instead. Other staff may have to be assigned to stand by the doors during lunch hours. Additional student activities will have to be planned, administration officials said.

And as Nate Rouse, OPRF’s principal, admitted, the school has to do a better job at making students wear their identification badges.

“We have in place an expectation for their wearing IDs. For their safety we’re going to have to know who’s in the building,” Rouse told board members. “We’re going to have to question students why they’re not wearing them. We’ve been inconsistent with that and we will change that.”

Rouse added that students and parents will be notified before the close of the school year about what will take place starting in late August.

But Millard noted that modifying the lunch policy should be one part of an effort to change the school climate and engage students more in learning, which she added could have an impact on the drug problem.

“We need to look at the options of where students can go. We have to investigate that. What can we do to keep them engaged when they’re not in class?" she asked. "We have address how they’re using drugs during the school day and safety in the building. Creating an environment that will excite them will be our challenge."

Even if the board reaffirmed its straw poll to a modified campus policy with a formal vote, OPRF would still remain one of the only West Suburban Athletic Conference schools to have some sort of open campus policy.

WHAT THEY’RE THINKING

Board member Amy McCormick indicated she favored a completely closed campus, although she said she’d be inclined to vote for an open campus for just seniors.

Board member Jacque Conway, favored closing campus and took it one step further: the retired Oak Park police sergeant suggested asking Oak Park police to issue tickets for violating village ordinances – so-called “P tickets” - to students picked up for loitering off-campus.

Other board members – Sharon Patchak-Layman, John Phelan, Ralph Lee, Terry Finnegan and board president Dietra Millard – indicated they favored modifying the current policy. Millard indicated a preference for just allowing seniors but could support the idea of including juniors.