Elmhurst Dist. 205 seeking input on facilities, all-day kindergarten

The Elmhurst Unit District 205 school board will hire consultants to study proposals for all-day kindergarten and possible facility improvements with an eye toward determining the level of public support for both projects.

The board on Tuesday unanimously approved a $74,500 agreement with Seattle-based Strategies 360, which is subcontracting with Chicago-based Minding Your Business, to assist with "strategic communications" involving the second phase of Focus 205, a proposed operational plan that includes student achievement objectives and facility plans and could lay the groundwork for a referendum question.

The district's Focus 205 process began in September 2015 and included community engagement sessions, focus groups and an online survey. Officials in the coming months will seek additional input and revise the plan before the board is expected to vote on it in late fall.

Once completed, the plan is designed to serve as a road map to guide the district's professional development and resource allocation decisions.

The three components of the plan are student achievement, sustainability and facilities.

District spokeswoman Melea Smith said the board wants the consultant to help home in on some of the ideas developed in the first phase of Focus 205.

"Our (Focus 205) participants were asking what exactly does this look like, what exactly is it going to cost. They were really looking for specifics," Smith said. "We want to come up with a plan that is going to help support the educational priorities of Elmhurst District 205 for years to come."

Smith said the first phase of Focus 205 was about identifying educational priorities. Now comes the tricky part: Finding the best ways to address those priorities and how to pay for them.

"The mayor and city council are putting a lot of money into infrastructure and attracting business and making this a vibrant community," Smith said. "And an excellent public school system is key to attracting families to Elmhurst and maintaining property values. That's one of the things we want to make sure everybody understands: what we're doing, why we're doing it and how it's going to benefit the whole community."

The consultants will help the district spread that message and determine how much the community is willing to support.

"We have to move forward with our informational portion of this," Smith said.

There are two "student achievement objectives" in the draft plan: ensuring that student growth drives a balanced assessment system and increasing student engagement in all grade levels.

The facilities portion, meanwhile, still is being developed and will depend heavily on what the community indicates it is willing to support, officials said.

The board also agreed to spend up to $5,000 to hire Steve Cordogan to study the feasibility of offering a districtwide all-day kindergarten program. He's expected to report back to the board in October.

"I think this will be one of the largest transformations in Elmhurst education in a long time," board member John McDonough said. "I think it's going to transform the kindergarten experience for the families."

McDonough said he's already heard from residents on both sides of the issue.

"I've heard a lot of people saying they're for it. I've heard some people say they're not for it," he said. "We need to utilize this contract to get more information and hopefully get our community into a consensus on it."

The lone vote against the study came from Karen Stuefen, who said she doesn't oppose it but would prefer to wait to see if the communications consultant might be able to provide information about the degree of community support for all-day kindergarten.

"We need to see whether the community will support us updating all our facilities to support all-day kindergarten," Stuefen said. "We just need to get out to more of the community because that is a facilities request. A facilities request would be like a referendum and that requires the community to support that. And the study could provide that information."