Kaneland building referendum jumps to $65 million

The Kaneland school board approved a $65 million building referendum for the February ballot on Monday night.

It is essentially the same proposal voters rejected this spring, except that the price jumped $12 million.

The school board voted 6-0 to add the referendum to the ballot.

The referendum is desperately needed to take care of crowding issues at the middle school, officials said. While the school capacity is 750, the sixth through eighth grades will have about 1,125 students next year, Principal Rick Burchell estimated.

The building will be at capacity next year with just the sixth- and seventh-graders, he said.

Eighth-grade students are now in the high school building for half the day, but that has caused problems, including forcing some students to drop exploratory classes and increasing cafeteria study halls to 50 students at a time, Burchell said.

Meanwhile, the library is used for classes three periods a day and each lunch period is 22 minutes. It's difficult to have all-school assemblies because the eighth grade is at the school for only a small portion of the day, he said.

"While it looks like efficient coping, it's coping at a loss," Superintendent Charles McCormick said.

The schools will have to make further changes next year, Burchell said. If the eighth-grade class stays at the high school, that building would be at capacity by the 2008-2009 school year.

This year's referendum for a new middle school and additions to the current middle school and Blackberry Creek Elementary had a price tag of $53.2 million.

The $12 million jump is due to large increases in building materials, said Tom Runty, assistant superintendent for business.