The 29-day sit in at Whittier Elementary School continues on with parents and supporters still camped out in a makeshift library in a former field house, with the hopes that the Chicago Public Schools system will renovate the structure and make it a permanent library. They say independent experts have found the building to be structurally salvageable.

But CPS insists the building is structurally unsound and must be demolished, creating space for a new play area.

The parents experienced a triumph of sorts last week when the City Council ordered CPS to turn the gas in the field house back on. All the same, the families occupying the field house are drinking bottled water, sleeping on inflatable mattresses and living in conditions that CPS CEO Ron Huberman has called ''unsafe'' and ''an accident waiting to happen.''

''Keep in mind my background was head of emergency management. I know an unsafe situation when I see one,'' Huberman told WBEZ-FM (91.5). ''That is a small building. That building has no carbon-monoxide detector. That building has no fire-suppression system. It's now full of books and it's full of kids. That makes us very, very nervous.''

But jittery nerves have not been enough to bring an end to what any reasonable person would call a disaster waiting to happen.

How things got to this point is beyond me. But with a lame-duck mayor, a possibly lame-duck schools CEO, and a city captivated by February's mayoral election, maybe it's not surprising the standoff has yet to be resolved.

Just for kicks, I talked to most of the declared or contemplating mayoral candidates to see what they would do. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart declined to comment because he's not officially in the race. U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez declined to comment and, to my puzzlement, Rahm Emanuel's ''Tell it like it is'' campaign also refused to weigh in. The rest of the field, of course, said they never would have let such an outrage get so out of hand, which admittedly is easy to say.

Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) cut straight to the chase: ''An elected school board offers way more checks and balances than an appointed one.''

State Sen. Rickey Hendon said the same and added: ''They should build them the library even if they have to build one from the ground up -- that would satisfy the people and that's the most important thing a mayor can do. The money? There's always money.''

Both U.S. Rep. Danny Davis and businesswoman Carol Moseley Braun said they never would have let the situation get to this point. ''I would have called my superintendent in immediately and ensured that the parents would be sat down with and listened to so I wouldn't have to step in,'' Davis said.

And Moseley Braun said she would have raised private funds for the new library, if necessary -- anything to ''not discourage parental involvement.''

Jay Stone, a clinical hypnotherapist, and state Rep. Annazette Collins said they'd listen, listen, listen to parents. But Collins said she wouldn't necessarily give in. ''Though I would try to negotiate, you have to understand that everybody in the school district wants a new school lunchroom, playground, library,'' Collins said. ''You can't give in just because parents sit in. What if everybody did this?''

Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle both shook their heads that such a situation could still play out in Chicago, where Latino parents have had to stage hunger strikes to get schools built. Both practically guaranteed their own school leaders would not get themselves into this sort of mess, but del Valle said he'd "encourage CPS to work it out themselves.''

And Chico thinks the parents are aiming too low. ''They should ask for the park and the library," he said. "It can be done. It kills me that parents have to agonize over such a small issue -- this should have been solved by now.''

All easy to say from the sidelines, but it does feels like February might bring a much needed breath of fresh air.