District officials say students may not attend May Whitney again

With its classrooms packed up and stripped of their young charges, Lake Zurich's aging May Whitney Elementary School silently awaits a decision on its future.

Work continues feverishly to get the school's 436 registered students into classes at the Annex building next door. School is likely to start Sept. 4 or soon thereafter. Students at District 95's other eight schools started Wednesday.

What should be done with the 58-year-old May Whitney school at 120 Church St. is perhaps the biggest question that remains unanswered, at least for now.

Meanwhile, a second information meeting to update parents and staff on the progress with getting the Annex ready for occupancy and on setting a timeline for future decisions will be held Monday. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Annex library, 100 Church St., Lake Zurich.

Flooding from an Aug. 6 storm led to asbestos exposure and mold problems, effectively shutting down the school on Aug. 16.

This is the third time in 15 years mold has been found at the school. The district has not been able to pinpoint the source of the flooding. To do so would take a major maintenance project, officials said.

Lake Zurich Unit District 95 administrators have made it clear they do not want students in the building ever again, even though experts say May Whitney can be reoccupied once the mold and asbestos are cleaned up.

"They have a lot of expertise, but we're also dealing with public perception," District 95 Superintendent Brian Knutson said. "You have a building that has other significant structural issues. The costs of remedying that are enormous in terms of putting a permanent fix to it."

May Whitney needs about $754,000 in urgent life safety work by April 2008, and roughly $1.7 million in improvements over the next five years. Future repairs include upgrading the school's boiler, roofing, heating and ventilation system, and technology integration to bring it up to speed for today's students.

None of that work will be done now. Officials plan to make urgent repairs to the Annex instead. That building needs roughly $103,000 in life safety work within the year.

"We weren't going to do any life safety work at the Annex because we weren't going to use the building," Knutson said.

One option for May Whitney is using it for office space in the short term.

The other is demolition, per the administration's own recommendation in a June 21 facilities report. That recommendation was made after considering declining elementary school enrollment and the estimated $31.6 million cost of upgrading all district facilities over the next 10 years to maintain them in fair condition.

"We didn't just make those recommendations in a vacuum," Knutson said. "I think what this (flooding) does is it escalates that there is a need to replace the building."

The district facilities' report recommends asking voters for money in April 2009 to build a new school on the May Whitney/Annex site at a cost of roughly $24 million, and for other improvements.

The plan called for a new school to be built, likely 2010-11. Both May Whitney and the Annex would be razed. Charles Quentin Elementary would be closed and sold off, and the student population redistributed among five elementary schools.

Those options and timelines for execution will have to be revised in light of the current crisis, school board President Kathy Brown said.

"Obviously, our facilities plan has to be modified at this point," she said.

Even with the current May Whitney situation, district officials acknowledge a referendum will be a tough sell.

With the Annex soon-to-be occupied, the district must also create a contingency plan that would include a "swing space" should a crisis occur with another school.

The school board will discuss several options for financing the district's facilities needs at a Sept. 13 meeting.