Hyde Park Day School will open a third
campus next school year on the grounds of the former Mount Assisi
Academy in Lemont [Illinois], officials said. The Hyde Park Day School West
Campus will be housed on the third floor of the main building at 13900
Main St. The school served as an all-girls Catholic school for 60 years
until its closing in June 2014. "It is kind of a long time coming. Our founding executive director
and the board really envisioned all along that we would have a campus in
the city, a campus in the north and a campus in the west," Principal
Jay Smith said. The school for students with learning disabilities
was founded in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood in 2000. It added a
campus in suburban Northfield in 2004 and the original school moved to a
larger space at 6254 S. Ellis Ave. in Hyde Park in 2014. The
newest campus will be situated on a 50-acre parcel that overlooks the
I&M canal. The Hyde Park Day school will take 13 classrooms on the
top floor of the main school building, leaving the two floors below to
continue to operate as a retreat center, Smith said Tuesday. The
school also will have access to the grounds, which includes baseball
fields. Students will have access to Mount Assisi's former gymnasium and
its stage, he said. Hyde Park officials also plan to add a playground. "Right
now, we have students at both campuses coming from the western
suburbs," said Smith, who added that commute times for such students
often exceed 1.5 hours each way. The Hyde Park Day School has just
120 students evenly split between its two campus. This is the maximum
number of students allowed at the school, which focuses on educating
students "with average or to superior intelligence" that struggle with
dyslexia or other similar learning- or reading-based disorders, Smith
said. The
school accepts students from first through eighth grades. It plans to
cap its enrollment at 60 students in Lemont. This will enable its staff
to continue to provide a 5-to-1 ratio of students to instructors, he
said. Most students at the school are enrolled for two years. This
is about the average amount of time it takes to enable such students
with strategies that allow them to transition them back into traditional
public or private schools, said Smith, who has been the principal on
the main Chicago campus for the past seven years. Sister Patricia
Kolenda is the provincial superior for the School Sisters of St. Francis
of Christ the King. She oversees the former Mount Assisi Academy
campus, which she said has been unofficially renamed the Mount Assisi
Center. The arrival of Hyde Park Day School has essentially
completed the repurposing the school that was built in 1954. The bulk of
the grounds are now used for religious retreats and operate under the
title Our Lady of the Angels Retreat Center. Most of these retreats
happen on the weekends and thus are not expected to interfere with the
school, Kolenda said. Retreats take place on the second floor of
the main building. The first floor is used as a cafeteria and kitchen by
those attending the retreats, which mostly consist of laypeople, she
said. "There really is no other space that can be leased," said
Kolenda, adding that there's a dormitory on campus too for overnight
retreats as well as a retirement center on the property operated by the
sisters called Alverna Manor. Mount Assisi Academy was founded in
1951. Dwindling enrollment as well as a budget deficit were both cited
as reasons for the school's closure. The school's enrollment had
declined from 315 students in 2006-2007 to 143 in its final year. Smith
said admission staff have already begun to meet with parents about the
new campus as well as check in with consultants and Chicago-area groups
dedicated to improving outcomes for children with dyslexia and other
learning disabilities. "We are very pleased that Hyde Park Day
School is going to come here," Kolenda said. "Our religious order is
dedicated to teaching children." Howard Ludwig is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown. Chicago Tribune/Daily Southtown
