It’s a cold day for working folks. And kids.
In Chicago the temperature was 6 degrees when I rolled out of bed at 5AM this morning.
When the kids walk into my room it may get up to 9 degrees.
Park Ridge isn’t a poor town. But our building is 60 years old and so is the boiler that heats it. The board of education is having trouble figuring out how to pay for a new boiler.
In preparation for a morning like this the custodian has to come in on Sundays to crank the old thing up so that the building will be tolerable today.
Even then, some days in January kids have to wear their coats and gloves until about noon on Mondays because the rooms are so cold. We have no AC, so in August and June the rooms are so hot that we take the kids outside to cool off. When it rains in the Spring, some hallways are covered with worms that flow in with the rainwater that seeps in under the doorways. The swings haven’t been in the playground for several years
