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The Chicago Park District this month clipped quick the swimming season at 11 outside swimming swimming pools, highlighting a disparity within the variety of working days at swimming pools throughout town, a Chicago Sun-Times evaluation exhibits.
Six of these swimming pools had the fewest swimming days final 12 months amongst all town’s swimming pools.
This 12 months, scheduled entry to swimming pools different extensively, from 72 days to simply 50 days. The swimming pools on the decrease finish included the 11 that solely discovered on a couple of days’ discover that they might shut on Aug. 10, moderately than on Aug. 17 as promised.
In 2024, public entry on the metropolis’s 50 outside public swimming pools additionally included an enormous vary, from 43 full days to 74 days, a distinction of a couple of month. Some of the variations within the seasons had been deliberate. But swimming pools additionally misplaced open swimming days for mechanical points, workers callouts or security issues like storms and crime reported close by — although officers say lots of these closures lasted lower than a full day.
In each years, swimmers had the least entry to outside park swimming pools in Ada, Bessemer, Chase, Oakdale, Union and Wrightwood parks. All these swimming pools closed on Aug. 10. They span a wide range of neighborhoods, and parks officers say they labored to make sure a fair distribution of open days throughout town.
“It’s a bummer,” stated Kalle Larson, a dad who took his daughter swimming at Wrightwood’s pool, 2534 N. Greenview Ave., practically a dozen occasions this summer time. “I don’t know what costs are associated with it, but if it’s a staffing problem, can’t they hire someone else?”
Six Chicago Park District swimming pools unexpectedly closed early for the season earlier this month.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file
In June, Chicago Park District CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa promised all 50 outdoor pools would be open seven days a week through Aug. 17, touting an expansion of pool availability unseen since 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. He told the Sun-Times that depending on staffing, he hoped to be able to keep additional outdoor pools open longer, past the Aug. 18 start of classes at Chicago Public Schools.
Ramirez-Rosa has since changed course on the 11 outdoor swimming pools, announcing they’d close a week early.
In the end, 25 stayed open through Sunday while 14 have been given extended operating days through Labor Day. Another 27 indoor pools remain open for most of the year.
Parks spokeswoman Michele Lemons says a “drastic reduction” in the seasonal lifeguards who staff the pools — about 70% of whom are high school and college students — forced the park district to close pools early and redeploy its lifeguards.
The Chicago Park District has struggled in recent years to recruit enough life guards but says this year applications were up more than 50%. Most outdoor pools closed on Aug. 17. District officials said nearly 70% of seasonal lifeguards are students who needed to return to school.
Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times
Lemons, who would not make any officials available for an interview, pointed to a larger number of pools staying open until Labor Day this year — 14 outdoors this year, up from 11 last year. When considering which pools to keep open longer, officials leaned for the first time on a city tool known as a heat vulnerability index, a measure that identifies the hottest areas of the city where people are most vulnerable to getting sick or dying from extreme heat.
That led to keeping Avalon Park, along with two more indoor ones at Carver Park and Austin Town Hall, open through Labor Day, she said, so residents there would have more cooling options.
Cooling is a critical role that pools and the parks play, Ramirez-Rosa has said, helping keep residents safe from the heat as summer temperatures surge.
It’s been a muggy, extremely warm and humid summer, too, according to Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford.
The average temperature in Chicago through Tuesday has been just above 76 degrees, which is almost 3 degrees above normal and tied for fifth highest on record, Ford said.
The humidity has kept nighttime temperatures above average, Ford said.
“It has been a very hot summer so far,” Ford said.
Katie Hogan and her two kids learned the lousy news that Wrightwood Park’s pool, the center of their summer Saturday tradition, already was shut down for the season when they showed up to swim last weekend.
“We would love it if could stay open a couple of weekends longer,” Hogan said.
The staffing issues came as a surprise. “There always seemed to be a lot of lifeguards on duty, even on days where the parents had to stay in the pool with their kids,” she said. “But if they’re hiring teenagers then I get it.”
Contributing: Cindy Hernandez
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