The Lincoln-Way High School District 210 board Thursday night formally voted to seek a long-anticipated $60 million bond issue referendum in the March 17 election to finance a major expansion of the district’s two schools.
The school board also approved a related resolution pledging that any funding received from the state for the project will be rebated to taxpayers. Supt. Lawrence Wyllie said the mechanism determining state funding for construction projects beginning after 1998 is “in a state of flux” and it is unclear how much money the district could receive.
The high school district will ask voters to approve the issue to pay for remodeling the freshman-sophomore Lincoln-Way East Campus in Frankfort and the junior-senior campus in New Lenox into two separate four-year high schools.
The remodeling project would include additional classrooms at each building, separate athletic fields and swimming pools for each, and a new fine arts center at the Central Campus.
Enrollment is more than 4,300 students. Because of rapid growth in Frankfort, Frankfort Square, Manhattan, Mokena and New Lenox, the buildings will reach their combined capacity of 5,000 students in a few years, officials said.
Separate schools will accommodate more students and allow more participation in extracurricular activities, school officials said.
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