The Old Town School has begun spending the proceeds of its fundraising campaign for improvements to its building at 909 W. Armitage, with new windows and a freshly painted facade completed and bathroom renovations in progress.

At a “community meeting” held last week at the building, interim CEO Jim Newcomb said the School has completed about a third of the projects planned for the building.  On tap soon are improvements to “the parlor,” the streetfront classroom that occupies the space formerly used by the building’s music store.

Additional improvements -- including heating and air conditioning, soundproofing and new sound and lighting for the concert hall -- will proceed once more money is raised, Newcomb said.  The school previously announced a $250,000 fundraising goal for the building.

If you love 909 W. Armitage and what it means to the Old Town School and the community, we hope you’ll consider making a donation toward the renovation efforts via this GoFundMe page set up by OTS:  https://www.gofundme.com/oldtownschoolarmitage.  You may also donate directly to the School here: https://oldtownschool.org/support/909/. 

We also encourage you to sign up for classes and workshops at the School -- and encourage your friends to do so as well.

The building improvements demonstrate a dramatic turnaround from the announcement in October 2018 that the School would sell the building, where it had offered classes and music performances for 50 years.  That announcement sparked enormous community opposition and the creation of a change.org petition that collected more than 15,000 signatures..

Executive director Bau Graves retired in January.  Newcomb, a former Boeing Co. executive who had been serving as a member of the School's board, was appointed interim CEO through June 2020.  In March, the board reversed plans to sell the building and instead decided to make improvements to 909 and work on boosting student enrollment.

While Graves’ administration sought to shrink the school’s footprint, under Newcomb the Old Town School is expanding.   In August, the school announced it would take over operations of the Sherwood Community Music School in the South Loop, which had merged with Columbia College in 2007. 

“Classes in the South Loop will reach an entirely new audience,” Newcomb said. “We’ll have a little hive of folk music there, just like Lincoln and Armitage.”

The School has also made progress in building the School’s endowment, which was the stated reason given for selling 909.  The endowment was only $300,000 last year and is now $1.1 million, Newcomb said. “For an organization our size, that’s pretty small,” he said.  A larger endowment, generating a regular return on money invested, is critical to the School’s financial security, he said. The board would like the School to have a $10 million endowment.

The announcement last year that the Armitage building would be sold followed seven consecutive years of declining student enrollment.  Tuition provides 60 percent of the School’s revenue. The Armitage building had suffered particularly steep enrollment declines, but that has begun to turn around, board chair Rob Ospalik said at the meeting.

The board “pivoted from looking to move on from this location to investing in this location,” said Ospalik, who took over as board chair from Kish Khemani in July.  “Enrollment is not quite at the stabilization level (at 909), but we’re turning it around and making good progress.”

Kim Davis, the School’s director of education, said new programs are being offered at 909, including “Wiggleworms Mixtape” drop-in classes for young children and care-givers, theater classes and children’s dance.  

About 30 people attended the meeting last week after it had been rescheduled twice.  In response to a question, Newcomb noted that the School has no debt and “is doing OK financially.”  Its financial performance for the year is “on plan,” he said.

Other topics addressed at the meeting included:

• Relations between administration and teachers. Davis said the administration has been meeting biweekly with leaders of the Old Town Teachers Organization (OTTO) union established earlier this year.  Contract negotiations will start soon, she said. “It feels to me like the faculty is feeling better and more secure over the past few months.”
• Establishment of a student committee. An initial group has been appointed and has met once so far, Newcomb said.  He said the committee will have three missions: (1) “To provide a channel for ongoing feedback from the students”; (2) “To find new ways to make people feel included” in the OTS community; (3) To arrange events for the community that can “also raise a little money for the Old Town School.”