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First Day a 'Celebration' for Our Lady of Victory After Saving School

By Josh McGhee | August 19, 2014 1:20pm
 Members of the community raised $900,000 to help keep the school open earlier this year.
Our Lady of Victory
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PORTAGE PARK — After raising nearly a million dollars to save a Northwest Side Catholic school, parents returned with their kids to Our Lady of Victory for the first day Tuesday with a lot of feelings.

"Today was the celebration. People are happy. They feel satisfied now, but we know we have to keep it going. There's still a lot of work," said Jenny Prey, adding that parents would need to remind donors to make good on the $900,000 in promised donations that helped save the school.

A "fiscal crisis" caused the Archdiocese of Chicago to peg the school, located at 4434 N. Laramie Ave., for closure. But in about three months, community members raised enough money to keep it open.

Prey, the mother of a fourth- and sixth-grader, was one of more than 100 parents who waved goodbye to their young ones as Principal Jennifer Hodge ushered in a new school year. Students dressed in navy blue shirts piled into the school around 7:45 a.m., equipped with lunch boxes and book bags to officially begin the school year. 

But between church, school, summer camp and fundraising efforts, it hardly felt like summer break for parents and students in "the community bubble," Prey said.

"Even if it's not school, you're never far from school. It's very comforting," she said, adding the sudden necessity to raise funds last school year bonded not only the children, but also parents.

For Hodge, in her third year as principal, seeing the smiling kids blast through the school doors was "the best feeling ever." She said she could sense renewed energy on the teachers' faces.

"Every year you get excited, but this year's at another level. I couldn't wait to get started and see my kids. I was looking forward to coming back to our meetings. I couldn't wait, really," Hodge said.

For Iryna Denkovych, bringing her son Maxim back to Our Lady was doubly special: it kept Maxim with his friends, and kept close an institution that helped her family adapt when they migrated from Ukraine a little over a 11 years ago.

"I'm really glad the school stayed. We like this school so much. [It] feels like home here," said Denkovych. "My son started in kindergarten and we didn't speak no English, and after one year he spoke English very well."

Denise Loy's second-grade son, Aidan, was thrilled to know he'd be seeing his old friends again when he learned the school would be saved. When she dropped him off Tuesday it was an opportunity to relive the journey of the last couple of months it took to assure that fact.

"Ten minutes in we knew what we had to do then; it was time for some action," Loy said, remembering the initial discussion of the possible school closure. "But, once we found out it was staying open ... our family was not going to be pulled apart. There was this incredible feeling of a community coming together."

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