This fall there will be room for 200 more 4-year-old full-time preschool students from low-income in Elgin School District U46. And half of them will be housed in vacant space in the Jayne Shover Easter Seals Center building at 799 S. McLean Blvd. in Elgin.
The U46 Board of Education voted 4-3 on Monday to lease 12,800 square feet of space in the Shover building for three years at $128,000 a year. The building is controlled by Heidner Property Management Co. The Easter Seals Center will continue to operate its rehabilitation activities for the disabled in the other half of the building.
The rental cost and most other annual expenses will be covered by a federal More at 4 Expansion Grant that seeks to improve school performance of low-income children by starting them out in full-time educational activities at age 4. Working with a collaboration of some 40 agencies called the Elgin Partnership for Early Learning, U46 will get $2.4 million in federal money in each of the next four years to add 10 classrooms for preschoolers.
But the three board members who voted against approving the lease — newly elected members Jeanette Ward, Cody Holt and Phil Costello — said they didn’t want to spend an additional $94,000 a year to hire a coordinator for the program when U46’s financial picture for next year remains uncertain. They also questioned the philosophy behind the project.
“We need to find different options for providing education, from preschool to high school,” Costello said. “We can’t be spending money, even if it is grant money, on programs we don’t have money for.”
Ward said she was voting no “because of the continuing cost to the district and because I believe full-day preschool is not appropriate to child development.”
District CEO Tony Sanders said administrators wanted to put half of the 10 new classrooms in the eastern half of the district and half in the west. Space was found for five in Horizon Elementary School in Hanover Park. The Jayne Shover site will satisfy the need for five in the west.
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To enroll, children must be 4 years old by Sept. 1 and come from a family with income less than 200 percent of the poverty level.
“I feel very strongly about this,” board member Veronica Noland said before she voted yes. “My child would not be as successful as he is if not for this kind of program.
“If we don’t do something, we leave these children behind,” Noland said. “They show up for kindergarten and they’re not ready.”
Board member Traci O’Neal Ellis said research shows that “at-risk” children especially benefit from such classes.