Consultants: Barrington 220 school buildings good but some crowded

The 12 school buildings that make up Barrington Area Unit School District 220 have received generally high marks from district consultants paid to assess them, but several buildings show signs that they are serving more students than they were designed for.

Consultants from DLR Group, an international architecture company with an office in Chicago, are on their fourth and final week of presenting their findings school-by-school as part of building a new master plan called Blueprint220. On Tuesday night they were at Station Middle School, which was built in 1966 and is the oldest building in the district.

Like others in the district, Station earned good ratings from the consultants in areas like the amount of noise, how much energy is used to heat and cool the building, and the building's overall condition. The consultants gathered data a variety of ways, including by shadowing students through their day.

Denny Burke, a DLR Group architect, said he got a taste of the Barrington 220 student experience ranging from a Barrington High senior all the way down to a North Barrington Elementary first-grader.

Burke said the experience let him see some of the building issues firsthand. At Prairie High School, he saw the effects of crowding.

"Many times I had to walk behind students because I couldn't walk next to them," Burke said. "It was like a salmon going upstream."

Superintendent Brian Harris said the district's middle schools are the most strained by the current level of enrollment. Both schools have added educational space in recent years by bringing in mobile classrooms, and Harris said expanding the existing buildings or building another campus are some of the options that the school board will be discussing this year.

On Tuesday night there were about 25 people in the audience to hear what the consultants had found out and to give feedback on what they would like to see done.

District spokeswoman Morgan Delack said they anticipate community turnout to increase as the Blueprint220 process moves along.

"At this stage in process we don't have big ideas to share," Delack said.

"It's been more difficult to engage our community, but we anticipate more people will attend community sessions when we have more plans to share."

According to the Blueprint220 schedule, the next time they will actively engage the community for feedback will be in September.