Officials at Kaneland School District 302 plan to shift the district’s elementary school boundaries for the third time in three years, the school board announced last week.
School board members also plan to seek a building bond referendum measure next November to fund building more schools to ease overcrowding in the booming district.
“We’re getting more kids faster than we can build schools to hold them,” said Assistant Supt. Tom Runty. “We didn’t get as much mileage out of last year’s redistricting as we’d thought, because the development is moving too fast.”
The district plans to transfer about 250 students from Shields Elementary School in Sugar Grove. Most of those students will go to McDole Elementary School, which opened this year in Montgomery, while the rest will go to Blackberry Creek Elementary School in Elburn.
“We’ll try to put as many as we can in McDole, because it has the most open seats,” Runty said. “Blackberry Creek just opened in 2004, but it’s already starting to get crowded.” If necessary, some Shields students might end up at Stewart Elementary School in Elburn.
An addition to Blackberry Creek is one option on the district’s drawing board, Runty said. Officials’ next building project is erecting a new middle school on 206 acres on Harter Road in western Sugar Grove. That building is projected to cost between $29 million and $36 million.