On Tuesday night the District 97 Board of Education voted unanimously for construction to take place this summer to completely redo the Irving schoolyard. Thanks to a strong partnership between District 97, the Park District and the Irving PTO, this project is now a reality!

Our new schoolyard!

The approved plan includes moving the staff parking lot to where the current playground is, installing a large, multi-purpose, synthetic turf field where the current parking lot is, and having all new playground equipment in the northwest area of the current asphalt. There will be a main entryway along Harvard Street and a small plaza at the stoplight.

This plan has safety as its highest priority. The most obvious safety feature is that our students will be able to play on a field instead of asphalt. Supervisors will not have to supervise around a corner anymore. The playground will have a rubber surface and all new equipment. The smaller parking lot also gives our students more space to play.

For more details on the plan itself, please see the updated Frequently Asked Questions page of irvingschoolyard.com

Park District Partnership
Thanks to a huge showing of community support, the Park District is making a significant financial contribution toward the cost of the new field. Irving will become a busy place as families from around the area finally come to Irving to play sports together.

Your Support
You made this happen. You have given financial support time and again, from buying a vase from the Green Team, to shopping at the Irving yard sale and contributing to the Ragnar relay runners. You signed petitions and talked to your friends outside the Irving community. You came to meetings to give input on what you wanted the schoolyard to look like. Some of those meetings were many years ago, and some happened just recently. All of it counts.

Thanks to your support, the Irving PTO was able to secure 10% of the total project construction costs. This includes generous grants from the Oak Park AYSO and Chicago Edge Soccer Club, large individual donations and contributions to all the fundraisers we’ve had for the Schoolyard Project.

There is one more fundraiser coming up: This spring we have another team of runners doing the Ragnar Relay from Madison, WI, to Chicago to raise money for the Schoolyard Project. These funds will enable us to pay for shade sails that (we hope) will go above the main playground structure. Click here to donate online to the Soaring Schoolyard Eagles Ragnar team!

Look for posters of the plans in the school lobby display case soon after spring break.

Thank you to all the teachers, staff, parents, guardians, students, friends and community members who made this project possible!

If you have any questions, please contact Margaret Jeschke (margaret_jeschke@yahoo.com), Laura Crawford (lauracrawford47@gmail.com) or Mr. Hodge (jhodge@op97.org).