160 students may switch campuses in Dist. 220

If the Barrington Area Unit School District 220 board implements any of the three start-time options they unveiled earlier this month, district officials say about 160 middle-school students would be asked to switch to the other campus.

But during the board's two-hour long discussion of the options Tuesday at their board meeting, district officials made it clear how much time and money would be saved by changing the middle-school boundaries.

Students are now placed at the Prairie or Station campus depending on where they went to elementary school. Under each of the three plans, every student north of the downtown Barrington Metra tracks would go to Station Middle School and everyone south would go to Prairie.

Superintendent Brian Harris said making that change would save around 15 minutes on the average bus route.

“It really shrinks the time on the bus for our middle-school students,” Harris said. “It allows us to shrink some of those transition times.”

The more efficient the district can make the bus routes, the fewer buses will be required to transport students. If the district kept the middle school boundaries where they were and tried to stick to the start times they've proposed, Harris said he anticipates that the cost increase would double. He added that district staff was going to look at the cost increase amount in more depth before the next meeting in July.

Board president Brian Battle said that of all the reasons why they should redistrict the middle schools, one of the most compelling is reducing the amount of time that kids are on buses on their way to and from school.

“(Redistricting) is an emotional issue, it is a big change for some people and it's not one we take lightly,” Battle said.

Harris said around 80 students per grade level would be affected by the change. The soonest the board would consider implementing start time changes would be the 2017-2018 school year.

During the discussion the board reaffirmed their commitment to sending out a new start-time survey to the community in the fall before their self-imposed Nov. 1 deadline to come up with their start-time changes.

Board member Penny Kazmier said the board will be clear on the surveys that the boundary shifts are a part of each plan, and she said she would like to find out how important redistricting is to the community.