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decision. I asked the Board to give me at least one
more year to try to secure the soundproofing funds
and they agreed, but they were unwilling to put off the
rest of the projects any longer than that one year.
The argument that the district had was that every
other school in the area that Ridgewood serves had
received soundproofing funds, including those even
further from O’Hare’s flight paths. Eventually,
through the efforts of the ONCC, representatives of
the City of Chicago Department of Aviation as well as
local FAA representatives agreed to visit Ridgewood.
But the most important discussion we held was with
staff members of U.S. Representative Jan
Schakowsky, who agreed to try to get the
congresswoman to visit Ridgewood.
She did more than just visit. She met with
students, attended a Government class, took a tour of
the school and announced that she would support us
until something was done about the situation. True to
her word, she fired off letters to the FAA, the Chicago
DOA, and Secretary LaHood on our behalf and
continued to work with the district on an information
campaign to convince the powers that be of the
inequity of their decision. Eventually, through
intervention of Mayor Arlene Mulder of Arlington
Heights, the president of the ONCC, a resolution was
passed supporting our eligibility.
Because of Congresswoman Schakowsky’s
intervention, we were eventually granted an audience
with an FAA assistant director if we were willing to
come to Washington D.C. to meet and put this whole
thing to rest once and for all. Their agreement
sounded like a not very veiled attempt to tell us to get
off their backs, as the Chicago DOA had told us
earlier.
So a small delegation of representatives from the
ONCC, Ridgewood, and High School District 214 flew
to Washington for a meeting and what we were pretty
sure was the “big brush-off.” After all the FAA was in
turmoil; it had been overdue for reauthorization from
Congress for several years and Congress was in the
middle of one of its government shutdown pouting
matches that threatened to bring everything to a halt.
In this atmosphere our group met with an FAA
assistant director for airports and a number of other
bureaucrats who seemed not in the least interested in
our plight. Clearly, someone had told them to give us
a chance to say our peace and send us off with the
illusion of being heard.
We spoke for about 10 minutes, with maps,
pictures, and all manner of data to back up our
cause, but it soon became apparent that our time was
just about up. The assistant director was in the
process of telling us why she could not provide funds
to us or the 700 other schools that required sound
insulation due to lack of funding when the door to the
conference room opened and Congresswoman
Schakowsky walked in. Suddenly, the FAA
employees in the room straightened in their chairs
and turned to hear her speak. She looked at our
maps, which showed dozens of schools surrounding
Ridgewood that had been insulated, and announced
that it was ridiculous that this one school had not
been included in the program. She also proclaimed
that she was not going away and asked that the FAA
once again visit Ridgewood.
This took place in the fall of 2009. Soon we were
told that the same assistant director would, in fact,
visit all three schools in the spring. This time around
we took another tour of the school and, thankfully, it
was a clear enough day so that flight paths over the
school were not altered. At the end of the event,
Congresswoman Schakowsky announced that she
would “not go away” until what she considered an
injustice was righted.
Soon we were informed that the FAA had agreed
to another test. If noise achieved the 60db level used
by the ONCC to qualify schools, we would be
included in the next cycle of funding. In July we were
tested, met the threshold, and were qualified for
(Continued from page 20)
(Continued on page 22)
Congresswoman
Jan Schakowsky
“We spoke for about 10
minutes, with maps,
pictures, and all
manner of data to back
up our cause, but it
soon became apparent
that our time was just
about up. The
assistant director was in the process of
telling us why she could not provide funds to
us or the 700 other schools that required
sound insulation due to lack of funding when
the door to the conference room opened and
Congresswoman Schakowsky walked in.
Suddenly, the FAA employees in the room
straightened in their chairs and turned to
hear her speak.”
—Dr. Robert Lupo, Superintendent of
Ridgewood Community 234
