Facility concerns top agenda in Dist. 203, 204

The primary focus of the new school year in Naperville and Aurora will not only be about what students learn, but where they'll learn it.

Facility issues top the agendas in both Naperville Unit District 203, where school starts today, and Indian Prairie Unit District 204, where students return to classes next week.

For District 203 that means putting together a master facilities plan that could include a large-scale renovation at Naperville Central or even the possibility of totally rebuilding the high school.

District 204 already has the money and taxpayer OK to build its third high school -- Metea Valley -- but is locked in a condemnation suit with the owners of the Aurora site earmarked for the school near Route 59. Construction has been delayed and the cost is rising.

District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis and new District 204 Superintendent Stephen Daeschner recently sat down with the Daily Herald to discuss facilities, curriculum changes and meeting students' diverse needs.

Q. What's your main goal for this year?

Leis: For me it's easy, dealing with facility issues.

Daeschner: Certainly the Metea facility and trying to do something with our struggling kids that might be a little different. We're going to try to pilot some all-day kindergarten and also put in some intervention … systems to use time, curriculum, pedagogy and people to strengthen some of our struggling kids.

Leis: We talked last year about meeting the needs of each student and the theme I'm going to hit with administrators and teachers is supporting each student with all those dimensions around socio-emotional learning and state standards and that kind of thing.

Curriculum-wise it'll be foreign language and we're piloting a new elementary science curriculum and looking to develop grants for junior high and high school science.

Daeschner: Our curriculum focus? Probably writing.

Q. Are there any plans to look into elementary foreign language in District 204?

Daeschner: I have not heard anybody talk about it. It could be, but I don't know.

Q. Do you know how the District 203 foreign language program is going to manifest itself?

Leis: We'll come back to the board in the next couple months. We're looking at both a pilot in dual language immersion and partial immersion; one or both. It's unclear yet how this will play out but we'd try it in one or two different sites. We're looking at Spanish and possibly Chinese, but that's a vision right now. There are lots of logistics to work out.

Q. In District 203, it's been over a year and a half since the architectural consultant's study of your facilities came out. Then there were three potential plans, which were narrowed down to one, and now we're back to three. What's been the challenge in creating one master plan?

Leis: We still want to ask the community about all three plans the task force looked at and we'll make it clear in our presentations which the task force recommended.

But as things have evolved with the (Caroline) Martin Mitchell property (near Naperville Central), there have been other things that transpired since those recommendations.

Looking at whether we can expand the elementary hot- lunch program, for example, appears at this point as if it might be dependent on renovating Central.

So there are some things that have impacted (the district) since then. We always said the task force recommendations have to stand the scrutiny of additional community involvement, particularly as it relates to the financial implications.

Q. Looking into your crystal ball, will there be a tax-increase referendum proposal in February?

Leis: I support the task force recommendation, which would require a referendum of about $40 million (to renovate Central). That's where I am at this point, but I reserve the right to change my mind based on feedback from the community.

Q. So after all the research you still support the task force recommendation for major renovations instead of rebuilding Central?

Leis: Yes. I think we can get a quality Central for a reasonable cost and I think that serves the needs of our kids, which has to be my primary focus, but is also realistic in terms of taxpayers.

Q. Some people have said they are concerned it isn't truly a district-wide plan and only addresses the needs of a few schools. How do you respond?

Leis: I think what those people are forgetting is when we started two years ago we sent our architects through every single school and we sent an architect to sit down with the parent leadership, the principal, the teachers. We visited every school.

So from my mind we said rather than tackle all the needs of all the schools in the district, let's find some valid systematic way of identifying what the biggest needs are and that's why we've ended up with those. We looked at all the schools and came up with our top needs. If you look at the draft master facilities plan there are areas where we think we need to go next into phase two and three and four, etc. So I really feel while the recommendations are focused on a few schools, it came out of a study of every single school.

Q. District 204, meanwhile, is waiting for a jury to determine the price of land for Metea Valley High School. What happens if the jury sets a price that greatly exceeds the $250,000 per acre the district is offering?

Daeschner: All kinds of things. You look at whether you can scale back some or can you not scale back? What can you build for the price that is given to us? I believe the board has clearly said they're not going to go after more money, so we're going to build it with the money we have and all that will play out.

Q. Is looking at another site a possibility?

Daeschner: I have not heard anybody ever bring that up.

Q. Will construction be able to start this fall?

Daeschner: It can start if we get quick-take (authority from the state legislature). And that's still up in the air right now. If we can do that and we can get on site by Oct. 1, then we can still do ground preparation.

Q. Without quick-take, if you have to wait for a jury in September …

Daeschner: I don't know if we'll have time or not. I think it all depends on how fast that occurs.