Dist. 204 gearing up for new set of boundary talks

With the selection of a site for Metea Valley High School finalized, Indian Prairie officials say they may discuss new attendance boundaries for all three of their high schools as early as Monday.

School board President Mark Metzger said Wednesday he expects Deputy Superintendent Kathryn Birkett to update officials during a Monday work session on the status of her internal boundary committee's work.

The entire process, he said, could be complete by March.

That's just one of many tasks confronting the school board and district as they move toward the start of construction of Metea on 87 acres along Eola Road just south of Diehl Road in Aurora. Here's some of what lies ahead:

Boundaries, take 2

In 2006, Indian Prairie Unit District 204 endured a long and bitter process to draw new high school boundaries for Neuqua Valley, Waubonsie Valley and Metea when they thought Metea would be built on the Brach-Brodie property at 75th Street and Commons Drive in Aurora.

With Metea scheduled to be built on the north end of the district, those boundaries no longer are applicable.

Board member Alka Tyle was not on the board during the 2006 boundary discussions, but she's read the "heated and controversial" history and doesn't expect it to repeat itself.

"One thing is for sure -- it does not need to be long, drawn-out process," she said. "You quickly get to a point where the same information gets repeated over and over again. That's when things start to go bad."

Metzger agrees, saying there will be a noticeable difference between the last discussions and the new set of boundary talks.

"I can tell you that this time we will not be having 25 hours of debate and discussions that drag on forever," he said. "This time we're going to make the process more reasonable in nature, both the time and quality of the participation."

Board member John Stephens said he hopes the board learned some lessons from the first go-around.

"Hopefully we'll be smarter this time. Hopefully we get more ideas, more input and more constructive involvement," he said. "No matter what we do, let's learn from what we didn't do right in the past and make it a better process so we can start with a nice fresh start."

A new Waubonsie

District leaders also want to create a fresh start for Waubonsie's reputation as part of the process. For years, board members say, the school has unfairly been labeled as inferior to Neuqua Valley.

Several of those types of comments were directed at board members again in the form of e-mails as they prepared to vote Tuesday on the new site for Metea.

"We've been working on that reputation for years, but most of the ugly things we hear are comments from people who have never stepped into the buildings," said Metzger, whose son graduated last year from Waubonsie. "It doesn't matter where the stuff comes from because it's just false information."

Board member Bruce Glawe said he was "repulsed" by many e-mails he received.

"We got some e-mails that would scald your ears from some people that are just embarrassing," Glawe said. "I gotta tell you, I have a son who graduated from there and he's a great young man.

"I also have two daughters who graduated from Neuqua and that's just as good. We have two great high schools in this district and people who say, without any real, factual basis, having never set foot in the halls of Waubonsie, that it is an inferior school don't know what they are talking about."

Officials hope boundary changes will diminish those feelings as new student populations fill each of the schools with new identities.

"It makes me very sad to see and read the things that I have seen," Tyle said. "We're expecting, though, that our students will get mixed and ultimately create a whole new Waubonsie, a whole new Neuqua and obviously a new Metea."

Metea in '09

Superintendent Stephen Daeschner concedes the August 2009 target date for opening Metea is a tight one. But, he said, engineers and project managers are confident it can be done.

"We think we clearly owe it to our kids and our community," Daeschner said. "They've waited long enough to put this high school in place."

In early February, he said the district will seek bids for grading, structural steel and a pre-cast foundation for the Eola Road site. By early March, he said trustees hope to close on the purchase of the property and have the bids approved.

If the project is still on schedule at that time, officials think construction can begin in early April.

They hope the bulk of the building will be done by August 2009, with extras like the pool and auditorium to be completed later. Freshmen and sophomores will move in first.

Waubonsie Valley's freshmen building would be converted in August 2009 into a middle school.