Northbrook Elementary School District 27 has broken ground on a building addition at Hickory Point School, part of a district-wide improvement plan funded by a $43.5 million referendum passed in April 2025.
Work started June 2 on the Hickory Point School expansion, which will include a multipurpose room, four new classrooms, a sensory space for students with special needs and some office spaces, along with a new playground for the early childhood students and updated K-2 playground, according to Superintendent John Deiter.
Two of the classrooms will be geared towards early childhood students and the other two will be for special education students at the school, Deiter said.
Deiter commented that the current playground is outdated and the to-be-constructed one will be more inclusive. It will add more accessibility features, like ramps to accommodate wheelchairs, and other equipment to support students with disabilities.
“Our current playground is ADA compliant, but this will be at an even higher percentage,” he said.
The need for the additions, Deiter said, is occurring mainly because of the district’s recent growth in early childhood and special education programs.
“We just added our early childhood programming within the last three years, and we’ve expanded the classes that we offer in our district for special education as well,” he said.
Deiter added that the district has previously relied on outside partnerships within the Northbrook community for the classrooms, but have since brought them within the district, which created a greater need for the new spaces.
“Some of these students would attend school outside of the district, even if they were our residents,” said Deiter.
“Now, we have created space for them within the district and it gives us more space to add an additional early childhood program to what we already have now.”
This comes after a referendum was passed with about 63% support in April 2025, providing the district with $43.5 million and establishing a debt extension service database, also known as a DSEB, per the district website.
More Top Picks Best Blue Light Contact Lenses
The DSEB gives the district the ability to issue bonds for future projects and repay through property taxes. The district can repay up to $2.7 million annually in property tax revenue.
The referendum funding also includes plans for extensions at the other two schools in the district, Shabonee Elementary School and Wood Oaks Junior High School.
Kimberly Rio, Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations for the district, said the Shabonee School additions will have more health and life-safety improvements, including roof and HVAC system replacements.
“As a school district, we’re required to do a health, life-safety study every 10 years,” said Rio. “So, with the last study that was completed in 2022, it was recommended by a licensed architect that it’s time for us to do roof-system replacements at Shabonee. We finished Hickory Point and Wood Oaks in previous years, so this was identified as part of our long-range capital improvement plan.”
Wood Oaks Junior High School will have similar improvements, along with a parking lot expansion to improve traffic flow and to make student pick-up and drop-off safer and more efficient. The parking lot expansion is still in the preliminary application stage with the Village of Northbrook, Rio said.
Construction for all three schools will take place over the next two summers, with some work expected during the school year.
The breakdown of separate project costs is about $16.6 million for Hickory Point School, including the roof updates and landscaping, and around $6 million for Shabonee, Rio said.
The work for Wood Oaks Junior High School is currently in the early bidding stages.
“We’re hoping that both of those come in a little under that budget, but those were the bids and the allowances that we have for those two,” she said.
“We’re so grateful to the community for approving the referendum, and it’s dollars that we are dedicating to improvements for all three of our schools.”