Hinsdale Middle School is continuing its patchwork plan to house increasing enrollment, but a majority of residents in a new survey favor a 16-room addition to ease the space crunch.
For five years, the school’s overcrowding has been a vexing problem for Hinsdale Elementary School District 181.
In 1991, voters rejected a $6.7 million bond issue that would have provided funds for an additional 15 classrooms for Hinsdale Middle School.
Faced with growing enrollment, the school board erected eight portable classrooms west of the facility two years ago.
Marcia Tyrrell, assistant principal, said two new classrooms will be carved out of the commons area to accommodate 60 more pupils expected for the next school year.
Tyrrell said 278 8th graders graduated, but 338 new 6th graders are expected in August, and that does not include any youngsters coming from private schools or transferring from outside the district.
Discussions are under way to convert the library learning center to three more classrooms and shift the center to other space for the 1996-97 school year.
But a community survey commissioned by the school board has found support for going back to voters for an addition.
In a survey of 251 residents, 58.6 percent favor building a $10 million, 16-classroom addition that could cost the owner of a $300,000 house $80 a year more in property taxes. The new classrooms would be ready in January 1998.
A majority of residents with children in the school district and non-parents both backed the addition, as did a majority of people who voted and did not vote in last April’s school referendum. In that election, citizens approved an $8 million bond issue for two school additions and repairs to six buildings.
The addition was one of three options offered to surveyed citizens in a May 1995 telephone poll.
A second choice, favored by 20.7 percent, was to change the schedule to a split shift or year-round school concept. The possibilities were an early shift from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with other pupils attending classes from 1:45 to 7:15 p.m. Or, the facility could be operated 12 months with only two-thirds of youngsters attending at any one time.
Those preferring a schedule change agreed, 62.2 percent compared with 29.6 percent of total respondents, that overcrowding is just a phase and enrollment will decrease in the near future.
The third option for surveyed residents was to tear down the school and build a new $20 million facility that would raise property taxes $160 a year for the owner of a $300,000 house. Their new school would be completed by January 1998 on land next to the current Hinsdale Middle School.
In the survey, 12.7 percent of citizens favored dismantling the present school and building a new one.