Glen Ellyn District 41 to survey residents about task force report

As part of a survey mailed to all its households, Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 plans to seek input on the recommendations of a task force that endorsed a roughly $15 million project to replace portable classrooms with a building addition at Hadley Junior High School.

The district already was preparing to poll residents on a variety of topics, and now it plans to also gauge their views on the task force findings. The district tentatively is set to survey roughly 10,000 households in June.

The results might shape a potential ballot question, though the school board received the recommendations only late last month.

"At the end of the day, we do need to get the larger community presence in on this conversation," Superintendent Paul Gordon said.

Nine months after members began meeting to study the future of the district's schools, the committee delivered its 40-page report to the board in April. In addition to expanding Hadley, the group of about 30 core members also favored a $21.5 million project to add space to elementary schools to house proposed full-day kindergarten classes and address "deficiencies" in accessibility, security and other areas of those buildings.

The report does not offer a plan to pay for the projects. It also cites estimated costs from the district's former architects.

Cheryl Witham, the new assistant superintendent of finance, facilities and operations, and the district's new architects will now bring a "brand new set of lenses to this," board President Erica Nelson said.

At Hadley, about 60 percent of committee members backed the $15 million proposal, calling for 10 new classrooms with an option for two more and a new space that doubles as a cafeteria and an auditorium. The project also would remodel the existing cafeteria into science labs and classrooms, among other upgrades.

Roughly 80 percent of task force members favored the $21.5 million project in elementary schools.

Members also clearly opposed constructing a new building to hold kindergartners at the so-called Spalding site, where the district owns almost five acres at First Street between Forest Avenue and Park Boulevard.

Instead, the task force wants kindergartners to go the "neighborhood" school they would attend as elementary students.

Gordon has been a supporter of a full-day kindergarten program, which could enroll 400 to 450 students.

Board member Stephanie Clark expressed frustration that space for such a program was not factored into a project that began before she took her seat on the panel. That work cost roughly $15 million, removed portable units and replaced them with brick-and-mortar classrooms at the four elementary schools. The last of those portables were cleared away from Churchill Elementary in April.

"There are people in the community that are going to say, 'This was really an inefficient use of tax dollars, that we just built onto these schools, and now we're doing it again. If we had done it all at one time, we'd have saved a lot of money,'" board member Kurt Buchholz said.

He has questioned whether kindergarten classes could fit within the district's existing facilities and on Monday cited enrollment dips. For instance, Churchill has 638 students, down from 700 students in 2010, he said.

Nelson said that enrollment data doesn't reflect changes in programming, adding that "programs drive your facility needs."

"The very reason we're here right now is because of those programmatic changes and the needs of the district changing so dramatically," she said.