CHICAGO — The Chicago Park District is preserving some swimming pools open via Labor Day to wrap up a summer season gripped by warmth waves.
The Park District will start closing swimming pools citywide Sunday as excessive school- and college-aged staffers — who make up practically 70 % of lifeguards — depart their jobs to hit the books.
Fifteen indoor and outside swimming pools will shut Sunday, and one other 42 will shut Aug. 17, based on a information launch from the Park District. The latter was the deadline deliberate for the top of this season, marking the shortest swimming season since 2022. Chicago Public Colleges open Aug. 18.
The town’s remaining 19 neighborhood swimming pools — together with 22 seashores and Humboldt Park Seaside, the town’s solely inland seashore — will now keep open via Labor Day, Sept. 1.
The neighborhood swimming pools staying open have been chosen for his or her massive capacities, with the Park District contemplating areas with the next warmth danger.
Swimmers can search when their pool is closing right here.
All indoor swimming pools are slated to reopen Sept. 2 with fall hours for open and lap swim, pending upkeep, based on the Park District.
The town opened all 50 of its outside swimming pools for seven days every week this summer season for the primary time since pandemic shutdowns and years of struggling to rent lifeguards.
In 2022, the Park District opened fewer than half of its neighborhood swimming pools. The subsequent summer season, some indoor swimming pools closed early to shift some lifeguards to cowl seashores. The entire metropolis’s outside swimming pools have been open final summer season, however most just for six days every week.
Dad and mom and swim coaches beforehand mentioned the Park District’s disorganization, low pay, sexual misconduct scandal and power underinvestment in neighborhood swimming pools fueled the lifeguard scarcity, whereas officers blamed the pandemic job market.
To handle the scarcity, the Park District has provided incentives geared towards younger folks and bumped up wages to $19.75 an hour, onboarding greater than 700 lifeguards this summer season.
“In preparation for the 2026 Summer season Season, the Park District is already within the technique of strengthening the seashores and swimming pools labor power by interviewing seasonal lifeguards for positions as year-round lifeguards and dealing with companions to extend entry to Be taught to Swim alternatives,” based on the information launch.
In July, a Douglass Park lifeguard was charged with homicide and tried homicide for taking pictures two youngsters over an alleged argument a couple of bicycle. An inside overview by the Park District discovered the lifeguard, Charles Leto, 55, had a historical past of “verbal altercations with workers and patrons.”
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