The proposed elementary-school attendance boundary changes in Elgin School District U46 won a unanimous endorsement from the executive committee of the U46 Citizens Advisory Council on Thursday. But they failed to receive unanimous support from the council’s enrollment and facilities committee on Tuesday, and they’re likely to receive some opposition when they go to the full citizens advisory council for a vote on Nov. 12.
To become reality in fall 2016, the changes would also have to be approved by the elected board of education in December. Some board members there already have indicated they might oppose two key elements of the plan — offering full-day kindergarten to all children and building additions onto Highland, Coleman and Laurel Hill schools.
The Citizens Advisory Council Executive Committee consists of the chairpersons of each advisory council committee plus several ex-officio members. After two hours of discussion on Thursday, the group voted 8-0 to endorse the enrollment committee’s recommendations, which after more than a year of committee study were based largely on recommendations from District Chief Executive Officer Tony Sanders and Chief Operating Officer Jeff King.
The most controversial issues at the enrollment-committee level were whether fifth-graders and their siblings should be “grandfathered” and not required to move to a new school for sixth grade; whether Herons Landing subdivision in Bartlett should be moved from the zone of nearby Nature Ridge School to the farther-away Liberty School in Bartlett; and whether 226 students who live in northeast Elgin should be moved from Lincoln School in Hoffman Estates to Coleman, Lords Park and McKinley schools in Elgin.
The grandfathering proposal proved to be the most controversial of all at the enrollment-committee level, with committee members voting as school delegations and each school voting based on a consensus of all its volunteer delegates. Eleven schools voted against grandfathering and eight voted to allow it.
Enrollment Committee Chair Roger Wallace said that despite the disruption of moving fourth graders to a new school for just one year, the majority of his committee argued that grandfathering would create too many problems. It would require operating two bus routes through the same neighborhood. And it would reduce the number of children moved away from the overcrowded schools, in some cases requiring a school to have one or two more classrooms than they would have needed if no children were grandfathered
The Nature Ridge-to-Liberty shift brought out the stiffest opposition during the townhall meetings, drawing some 80 negative comments. The proposal also split the enrollment committee, with 12 schools’ delegations voting to make the shift and seven schools’ delegations voting not to. The opposition from Nature Ridge parents was so adamant that when the enrollment committee went on to vote on the overall plan, Nature Ridge’s delegation voted against endorsing the entire plan, the only school’s delegation to do so.
Wallace said opponents of the Nature Ridge-to-Liberty shift argued that attendance at Nature Ridge already is expected to go down in future years, that the shift would disrupt the social networks of Herons Landing children and that it would be better to move special-education students now being bused into Nature Ridge.
By coincidence, this year’s chair of the entire citizens advisory council, Melissa Owens, represents Nature Ridge School. Though she voted Thursday to endorse the plans, Owens told the executive committee that Nature Ridge has been more crowded for several years than it is now, without its attendance areas being changed, so it seems unfair now when the school is at only 90.8 percent of its capacity to finally move kids to another school.
In the enrollment committee, the movement of 226 children from Lincoln School to Coleman, Lords Park and McKinley schools had been approved by an 18-1 vote, with only the delegation from Lincoln itself voting “no.” Wallace said parents whose children would be moved feared that because Coleman has more dual-language learners than Lincoln, their children would not get as good an education there.
The final four boundary changes were endorsed unanimously at the enrollment committee level and drew little opposition during the town hall meetings:
Moving 116 students from Channing School to O’Neal, Garfield and Huff schools on Elgin’s East Side.
Moving 44 students from Harriet Gifford School to Lowrie School on Elgin’s West Side.
Moving 177 students from Hillcrest School to Highland School on Elgin’s West Side.
Moving four students from Otter Creek School to Harriet Gifford School on Elgin’s West Side.
Wallace said King projects that the changes would reduce the need for mobile classrooms from the current 35 to just seven.
The committee’s report warns that the changes will work only if administrators also move some special-program classes, such as special education and English as a Second Language, from certain schools to certain other schools, and only if the school board agrees to build the additions onto Coleman, Highland and Laurel Hill.
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Wallace said the district’s demographer and administrators had asked for the plan to get rid of as many mobile units as possible and to move each school’s usage to no more than 85 percent of its official student capacity. Based on that guideline, eight schools were found to have too many students — Laurel Hill, Otter Creek, Coleman, Lincoln, Channing, Liberty, Harriet Gifford and Century Oaks.
Wallace said the proposed boundary changes and building additions would solve the problems at all those except Otter Creek and Century Oaks.
Wallace said his committee listed another five schools as being a “watch list” because they are expected to grow above 85 percent capacity in a few years or are now above 85 percent but are expected to drop in enrollment — Sunnydale, Ontarioville, Creekside, Hillcrest and Nature Ridge. The proposed changes would solve the problems at two of those, Hillcrest and Nature Ridge.
Executive Committee member Mary Van Slyck said that she is “kind of appalled” at how what originally was supposed to have the CAC enrollment committee proposing boundary changes became a case of the enrollment committee just commenting on changes proposed by the demographer and administrators.
Wallace explained that as the study process continued through last school year, committee members began to realize that the presence of so many different special programs, in which a student is bused outside his home attendance area to a school that offers that program, and the fact that these programs often require smaller class sizes than a regular school room, have made it almost impossible to calculate what a school’s true capacity is.
He noted that the whole plan also changed drastically just two months ago when CEO Tony Sanders and his cabinet of administrators decided it would be possible to offer full-day kindergarten and build additions onto three schools – both actions that the enrollment committee had no authority to recommend up to that point.
The full citizens advisory council will vote on the proposals at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at Elgin High School.