Dist. 95 needs time to tweak facilities plan

Parents of Charles Quentin Elementary School students must wait a little longer to find out whether the Lake Zurich school will be closed after the 2008-09 school year.

The Lake Zurich Unit District 95 school board planned to study the administration's recommendation to close the school over a few months and make its decision in January.

That decision will likely be deferred a couple of months, school board President Kathy Brown said Thursday.

Officials said the sudden closure of May Whitney Elementary School has thrown a wrench into the district's facilities planning.

May Whitney was shuttered in mid-August due to flooding, asbestos and mold problems, forcing relocation of students and staff to the Annex building nearby.

"Once Whitney went down, everything was up in the air," school board member Jim Hussey said.

District officials have canceled an Oct. 18 forum where the administration was expected to update parents on its short- and long-term facilities plan. A new date has not been set.

In a June facilities report, district officials cited declining student enrollment, under-utilization of buildings, and mounting repairs in aging schools as reasons to close Charles Quentin and May Whitney. The facilities committee also recommended building a new elementary school to replace May Whitney by demolishing it and the Annex.

Officials now plan to revise the 2008 facilities plan to include life-safety and other repair work needed at the Annex, which will serve as May Whitney's new home for several years. That should be ready by October.

The district must also determine the impact of not having the Annex as a swing space for emergency use, since officials have said they don't plan to ever use May Whitney as a school.

The decision on whether to close Charles Quentin will depend on recalculating building capacity at all elementary schools, getting updated enrollment projections, and figuring out the district's financing options for funding its facilities needs.

"We need to have some very reliable capacity numbers and where we think our student numbers are going to be in a couple of years," said school board member John Kropf.

The district's elementary school enrollment has steadily declined from 2,801 in 2004, and it is projected to be at 2,225 students by 2011. Officials plan to hire a demographer to draw up new projections.

Officials said a new group of community volunteers will be tasked to draw up a report tying the district's facilities needs with the available financial resources.