Dist. 15 makes adjustments to cope with space shortages

Palatine Township Elementary District 15 officials are making several short-term fixes to cope with growing enrollment at some of their 20 school buildings.

Four streets comprising 119 students have been moved from the boundaries of Jane Addams Elementary School to those of Winston Campus. A mobile unit is being set up at Lincoln Elementary School to house a full-time, regular classroom.

And programs that serve students from across the district have been moved to schools able to better accommodate them. The AIME special education program for kids who have cognitive and intellectual disabilities, for instance, is being moved to a less crowded Whiteley School.

Hiring a consultant to look at enrollment trends and what additional steps might be needed is a possibility the school board may consider.

“At this point, some schools are practically bursting at the seams,” board President Peggy Babcock said. “We need to sit down as a group and start to formulate a plan.”

Deputy Superintendent Jim Garwood doesn't see an impending crisis, however. Enrollment in the 12,700-student district is growing, but only by 50 to 100 kids per year.

“It may just be that we have to make more tweaks in the future and make do with what we have,” he said.

The economy did exacerbate space challenges at certain schools. Those drawing from areas with more multifamily housing have seen spikes in their population, whereas enrollment has stayed relatively flat or even declined in areas primarily populated by single-family homes.

Some of the swings have been sharp.

According to state-mandated report cards, enrollment at Jane Addams, Virginia Lake and Lake Louise respectively jumped by 139, 157 and 171 students between 2010 and 2012. Each of those schools is located in northeast Palatine, which has a high percentage of apartment and condo buildings.

Conversely, enrollment at both Hunting Ridge and Marion Jordan, located in more affluent areas, dropped by more than 50 students apiece over the same period.

“My thinking is that when the economy went south, homes stopped selling, so empty nesters haven't been leaving and bringing in families with kids,” Garwood said. “And Realtors have told me families have moved into apartments or doubled up, affecting enrolling in places with a lot of apartments.”

Garwood anticipates that as the housing market recovers, the trend will reverse or, at the very least, ease.

He also said it's important to note that while many of the buildings are at capacity in the instructional sense — the district attempts to meet the board's class-size targets — enrollment is down several hundred students from the year 2000.

“There was a time when half a dozen or more buildings had mobile units (as full-time classrooms),” Garwood said. “Now, they're mostly used part-time for art or a health class.”

Though it's common for any school district to experience enrollment ebbs and flows, several candidates who ran in the April election called for a long-range facilities study that would serve as the guide to any future redistricting and capital projects.

The review would address many of the discussions that inevitably arise each year about nonsensical boundaries and less than ideal school locations.

For example, although busy roads often serve as school attendance boundaries, plenty of neighborhoods are divided. And many children who live within a quarter-mile of a school attend another school significantly farther away.

“It wasn't too long ago that the west side of the district had cornfields,” Garwood said. “Boundaries are drawn as a school district grows and populations move, so there are some that don't look like they make sense.”

There's also ongoing debate about the location of Conyers Learning Academy, which houses alternative education and programs for at-risk students. It serves students districtwide, but is located in the southeast corner of the district, creating what Babcock calls a “busing nightmare.”

Garwood said a facilities and demographic study was done about five years ago. It predicted enrollment would decline. Plans for another study in 2010 were scrapped due to a lack of funds.

“It's the stumbling block we always come back to,” Garwood said. “We can potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a study, but unless we have money to actually follow up on the recommendations, then why do the study?”

Babcock said that while there are more pressing priorities facing the district, the board at least should have a discussion about whether to move forward with a new study.

The process could perhaps be less costly if the most recent study was used as a starting point, she said.

“You have to look down the road at the big picture,” Babcock said. “It's a mind-boggling task, but we need to decide things. Do we make more up-to-date, efficient and sensible (attendance) maps? Do we continue to do patchwork? Do we reconfigure schools?”