Dist. 211 renames new special-needs building

Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 will start next school year with an additional building to house new and relocated programs serving students and graduates with special needs.

Renovation of the former Barrington Orthopedic building next to Hoffman Estates High School is on schedule and it has just been renamed the District 211 Higgins Education Center, Superintendent Dan Cates said.

By mid-August, the long vacant building at 1030 W. Higgins Road will provide 26,000 square feet of space for both the district's existing Adult Transitions Program as well as a new program appropriately called New Endeavors, which will serve students along the autism spectrum.

The Higgins Education Center will bring under one roof the Adult Transitions Program now headquartered in a pair of trailers in the Hoffman Estates High School parking lot and at a leased facility outside the district's boundaries but associated with its Academy-South campus in Streamwood.

This program helps district graduates with mild and moderate cognitive impairments to continue developing their vocational, life and leisure skills through the age of 22.

The New Endeavors program will not only move students from other locations, but it also will move them back in-district from non-District 211 programs, Cates said.

Many of these students will come from either the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization's Miner School program in Arlington Heights or a private therapeutic day school.

The district entered a 10-year lease agreement for the building about a year ago, with an option to purchase it at any time.

A decision on a purchase may be made sometime after the new school board is seated after the April 7 election, but getting the renovation done was the first priority when the district took possession last year, Cates said.

The annual rent would be $72,000; $90,000; $102,000; $114,000; $126,000; $129,150; $132,379; $135,688; $139,080; and $142,557 - for a total of $1.18 million.

The initial purchase price was $1.45 million, but the cost of that option increases every year up to $2.47 million in the 10th year.

Under the agreement, money previously paid for rent won't be credited toward any year's purchase price.

An opening ceremony is planned to take place around the time the district's programs move there, Cates said.