Barrington District 220 asks residents not to burn leaves

On behalf of students and staff members with chronic respiratory conditions, Barrington Unit District 220 is reaching out to neighbors of its 12 school buildings this week to ask them to refrain from burning leaves.

Though some of the villages within the school district, as well as unincorporated Lake County, don’t permit open leaf burning, for some neighborhoods this is a busy time of cleaning up yards before the first major snowfall of the season.

District 220 officials are asking their immediate neighbors to either find different ways of disposing of their leaves or to consider doing their burning on weekends when students and staff are gone.

Leaf burning can force both adults and children with respiratory conditions to stay indoors — even keeping them from leaving school altogether when smoke becomes too heavy. And sometimes even that isn’t sufficient protection as the haze and odor from burning leaves can get into buildings’ ventilation systems, officials say.