Glen Ellyn District 41 may tap architects to begin designing proposed building additions

Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 school board members will decide Monday whether to direct their new architects to take the first steps toward designing additions to the district's elementary schools and Hadley Junior High.

The board will vote on a proposal commissioning GreenAssociates to determine the costs of such a project and to prepare conceptual renderings.

That decision would come about two months after a task force of parents and taxpayers endorsed a $15 million brick-and-mortar addition at Hadley that would replace the school's 10 portable classrooms — the last in the district.

Some members of that group also supported a $21.5 million project that would add space to the district's four elementary schools to house proposed full-day kindergarten classes and to address building “deficiencies.”

Both findings were based on estimated costs from the district's former architects.

If the board gives the OK Monday, GreenAssociates would be asked to vet the task force's recommendations and make any of its own, Superintendent Paul Gordon said Thursday.

The firm's report likely would be done in August or September and could help the district gauge whether to pursue a ballot question.

Gordon has supported the task force proposal for 10 new classrooms at Hadley with an option for two more and a new, multipurpose space that would include a cafeteria and a performing arts auditorium, among other upgrades.

But Gordon went against the group's other recommendation earlier this month when he told the board he favored building a new early learning center “designed specifically for the unique needs” of the district's youngest students.

The center would house an all-day kindergarten program and be built on about five acres of district-owned land where the former Spalding School was demolished in the late 1990s at First Street between Forest Avenue and Park Boulevard.

Board President Erica Nelson also has long favored that concept. Like Gordon, she says it would free up room in core spaces in the district's elementary schools.

“It would be a way to move numbers of children out of buildings that have 550, 625, 650 kids,” she said earlier this month. “But I recognize from the task force ... that's not something they agree to.”

Gordon said Thursday that based on the board's earlier feedback, the proposal for the district's architects does not call for preparing conceptual drawings for an early learning center.

Task force members want kindergartners to go the neighborhood school they would attend as elementary students.

“That was one thing that they were unanimous about, even though there was different viewpoints on a lot of other things,” board member Stephanie Clark noted.

Clark and board member Kurt Buchholz have continued to express frustration that space for such a program was not factored into a project that began before the two took their seats on the panel.

That work cost just under $15 million, removed portable units and replaced them with brick-and-mortar classrooms at the four elementary schools.

The last elementary portables were cleared away in early May.

Given that the recently completed project may now appear “shortsighted” in the eyes of the community, Clark has said the district needs to “demonstrate that we have a comprehensive plan, that we've addressed all the possible issues that we can think of, but also gone about it in a cost-effective way and not necessarily thrown in everything we could, but what we need to do.”

If the district pursues a full-day kindergarten program for all students, Gordon estimates staffing would cost roughly $1 million a year.

That program would enroll roughly 350 to 400 kindergartners.

The board has not decided how the district would pay for the construction or operational costs.

As for the latter, Clark has called for looking at existing funds; board member Drew Ellis has said the district should charge tuition for all-day kindergarten.