Dist. 200 considers enrollment change for apartment complex

Students who move into an apartment complex on the northern edge of Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 may be going to a school different from students already living there.

The district's boundary map calls for students living in the Covered Bridges Apartments near North Avenue and Schmale Road in Carol Stream to attend Hawthorne Elementary School in Wheaton.

But Director of Public Relations Erica Loiacono said a population "bubble" at Hawthorne a few years ago resulted in the district enrolling any new families from the complex at Pleasant Hill Elementary School in Winfield, where there was more room.

Now, she said, "we're looking at how can we stabilize and create a predictable enrollment strategy for both of those schools. This is taking a proactive approach. Right now, the current enrollment strategy works ... but if anything should shift in the next couple of years, we may see an issue."

While a recommendation has not been fully formed, the district hopes to get back on track with its original boundary map.

The change will not affect any current students or Covered Bridges families who have already have a student enrolled. But students from any new families moving into the complex probably would attend Hawthorne.

Roughly 150 District 200 students live at Covered Bridges, Loiacono said. About two-thirds of the elementary-aged students living in the apartments go to Pleasant Hill, and the remaining one-third attend Hawthorne.

Enrollment at Pleasant Hill, which is the largest elementary school in the district, is about 660 students. Roughly 290 students attend Hawthorne, which is the district's smallest school.

District officials are meeting with "stakeholders" now, including the principals, staffers and parents at both schools; the Outreach Community Center, which works with many of the families living in the apartments; and Covered Bridges management.

Loiacono said the district will sponsor a community meeting at the apartment complex, too, in an effort to reach out to the families who will be directly affected.

"We know that we are much more likely to get people to come out and talk to us and have a conversation with us if we go to them and so that plan is in the works," she said.

The school board is expected to review the recommendation for the Covered Bridges enrollment strategy at a meeting Jan. 14. A final vote likely will occur in February.

Board member Rosemary Swanson said she was a little concerned with what she felt was "a relatively aggressive timeline" and hopes the district will take time to reach out to parents.

But Loiacono said the timeline is due to the desire to have a new strategy in place before the kindergarten registration process begins at the end of February.

The need to possibly change the boundary strategy for Covered Bridges was brought up by the district's new enrollment committee, which met several times this fall.

The committee reviewed the district's last enrollment report, which was done by a demographer in 2013. Overall, the demographer predicted enrollment in the district will stay fairly stable, and district staffers said about 1,000 seniors graduated last year while more than 800 kindergartners came in.

Monitoring the impact and location of special education programs and English language learner populations throughout the district was one of the committee's top recommendations.

Members also told the board of education to keep an eye on the enrollment levels at Johnson, Madison, Pleasant Hill, Sandburg, Whittier and Wiesbrook Elementary Schools and Franklin and Hubble Middle Schools.