The non-profit ETHS Foundation plans to turn a conference and multi-use room at Evanston Township High School into “a dynamic, flexible, future-driven multi-purpose learning space” called Alumni Hall.
To help make that happen, on Monday night, the District 202 Board of Education approved bids to renovate Room A252 and the adjacent hallway.
In a memo to the board, Chief Financial Officer Kendra Williams says, “Through designated gifts, the ETHS Foundation has secured over $1,000,000 for Alumni Hall funding.”
Work will be completed over the summer.
On its website, besides calling Alumni Hall “future-driven,” the Foundation says “the new learning environment will combine leading-edge digital technology and modular furniture that ignites collaborative learning to unleash unique intellectual and social energy.”
It is also possible that the Foundation has bigger plans than just this one room and its new furnishings and equipment.
In her memo to the board, Williams says the “Foundation is gearing up to launch a capital campaign that will support a major capital project in celebration of the school’s centennial,” to allow for “large scale renovations to modernize areas of the building that haven’t been updated in decades.”
Williams says that Alumni Hall is just “one phase” of something larger, but no specifics have been provided yet on what that might be.
The Foundation is a non-profit group that raises money for capital improvement projects and scholarships at ETHS.
The organization’s website says the Foundation has helped with 45 projects over the past 15 years.