Mayor Rahm Emanuel today joined Speaker Michael Madigan, Alderman Marty Quinn and Alderman Michael Zalewski to break ground on a new three-story 114,500 square foot school building for Dore Elementary School, 65th Street and Nottingham Avenue. The current Dore Elementary School building will be repurposed to support expanding full-day preschool programming in the 13th Ward.

“The students at Dore have outgrown their current facility and will soon be in a building that accommodates more students and additional space to fit their remarkable academic successes,” said Mayor Emanuel. “I am thrilled that they will be passing the school down and helping us to open up more doors of opportunity for the younger generations in the community.”

The new building will broaden the range of educational opportunities for more than 1,100 students with classrooms for pre-k/kindergarten, diverse learning, music, art, science and computer. The building will also house multi-purpose rooms, a library, a gymnasium with a stage, student service suite, kitchen and dining facilities.

“The new Dore Elementary School is a sound investment in current and future Dore students, and in our community,” said Alderman Marty Quinn, 13th Ward. “With the hard work of our students, teachers and the whole community, we are able to provide our children with the opportunity at every level from cradle to a great career.”

Once complete, the new school building will provide relief for overcrowding and will also feature site enhancements that include turf playing fields, a playground, parking lots and right of way improvements. Dore is a Level 1+ neighborhood school.

“Today we celebrate new opportunities and vital investments for the children in our community,” said Alderman Zalewski, 23rd Ward. ““Time and time again, our students are achieving record academic gains and I look forward to seeing this growth continue in the new building.”

Development of the project will be managed by the Public Building Commission of Chicago and the anticipated opening is January 2019.

As Mayor Emanuel covered in his 2018 Budget Address, there has been more than $3.2 billion dollars in improvements at Chicago Public Schools since 2011. The city’s investments in youth will expand for the seventh consecutive year under the 2018 budget. In Mayor Emanuel’s budget, $1.8 million was allocated to help support five new high-quality early education programming sites to accommodate more young children. The City will be engaging the community to identify opportunities to use the current Dore school to expand access to full-preschool for the neighborhood. The additional sites will be selected depending on community need, and with input and insight from stakeholders and the communities. Additional youth investments will be made to expand after school and youth mentoring programs.

Mayor Emanuel and CPS have addressed overcrowding at over 35 local schools in recent years, including Skinner, Zapata, Dore, Dawes, South Loop, Prussing, Addams, Little Village, Bridge, Onahan, Ebinger, Pasteur, Canty, Byrne, Edwards, Dore, Garvey, Hale, Peck, Stevenson, Sauganash, and many more. The Mayor remains committed to working with communities to find innovative ways to relieve overcrowding.

The City of Chicago has been committed to broad investment in capital projects at schools across the city. Investments with CPS has included new schools and annexes, playgrounds and air conditioning, improvements and access to technology, new computers and expanded bandwidth, expanded academic programs and core facilities investments.

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