On a frigid day in December, Forrestal Elementary School first graders went outside to write their names on a white steel beam which they were told would be part of the new school being built immediately next door, where they will be among the first ones to learn.
Fast forward three months and those same students watched wide-eyed as a construction crane lifted the white beam bearing their names, and those of the rest of the school community, into place on the structure. It is the final steel beam on the new building.
“It’s exciting,” McKenzie, a first grader in Laura Rosenkrantz’s first-grade class, said.
“School will be really cool because we’ll be able to see where we wrote our names,” Barb added.
Forrestal’s first graders had a front-row view outside as the crane lifted the final beam into place as the rest of the student body watched a livestream of the event Tuesday in North Chicago marking a major step toward completion of the building.
With the first-grade classrooms positioned on the south end of the existing school building, Principal Cara Kranz said the children there get a firsthand view of the construction workers erecting the building they will enter as third graders in August of 2026.
Kranz said when the students signed the beam in December, they did not really understand the purpose of what they were doing. But, seeing their names on the beam as it was lifted into place made it easier to understand.
“It’s an exciting day,” Kranz said. “They saw where it will be in the building. This makes it real for them. The steel really makes a difference when they see the steelworkers up high putting it in.”
Built in 1957, the current building is in disrepair, but North Chicago School District 187 Superintendent John Price said the test scores there are the best in the district. He anticipates the new building will help them achieve even more.
“The current building is hot in the summer, cold in the winter and you can’t drink the water,” Price said. “The new building will raise (the test scores) again. It will be a 180-degree change. It will have everything new.”
Making the morning special for the students, Kranz said she picked specific music to build their excitement. It started with sounds from the Harry Potter movies, and built to a crescendo with the theme from the movie “Rocky” when the beam was lifted into the air and then put in place.
A joint effort between District 187 and the U.S. Navy — 25% of Forrestal’s students are from military families — Price said $57 million of the $72 million project is coming from the federal Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation and $15 million from the district.
Though there have been no problems so far with the cost-cutting measures being implemented by the federal Department of Government Effeminacy (DOGE), Price has concerns.
“We do have worries,“ he said. “We have been very fortunate so far with the progress of payments.”
Though the entire first-grade class will start the 2026-2027 school year in the new building, Price said a select group of second and third-graders will be there for fourth and fifth grade. There will be some classrooms for them. About 25% will have the choice. First priority will go to military families.
“This will mean less transition for them,” Price said in September. “They get plenty of transitions when the families change stations.”
