Dist. 300 OKs new boundaries

Despite a late flurry of objections, the Community Unit District 300 school board voted Monday to approve new attendance boundaries for the district's middle and high schools.

The board ratified the consensus it reached at a Jan. 19 work session, selecting proposal 3 for high school boundaries by a 4-3 vote and proposal 10 for middle school boundaries unanimously.

Proposal 3 will shift about 300 students who previously were slated to attend Jacobs High School to the new Hampshire High School opening at Big Timber and Ketchum roads.

The plan also will move about 90 students from Dundee-Crown High School to Jacobs.

Jacobs and Dundee-Crown are near capacity, while the new Hampshire High School will probably not even be half-full when the new boundaries are in place.

Board members said other plans would not have done enough to ease crowding at Jacobs and Dundee-Crown.

"If we don't move enough students out of Dundee-Crown and Jacobs, both of those schools will be overcrowded," board member Mary Warren said.

But many parents who will be affected by the change said they want their kids to go to Jacobs and that the board failed to take public input into consideration.

In a series of public hearings and in numerous e-mails sent to board members, proposal 10, which would have moved the fewest students, emerged as a favorite.

"Ten is the overwhelming choice, and they're not choosing it," West Dundee mother Michelle Kingsbury said. "Why aren't they listening to what the taxpayers are saying?"

The board did approve proposal 10, but only for the middle school boundaries. The plan will move about 115 students from Dundee Middle School to Hampshire Middle School.

The board also approved grandfathering, an idea that enjoyed perhaps even more support than proposal 10.

Under the form of grandfathering approved by the board, current seventh-graders and high-schoolers will be allowed to stay at their school even if they don't live within that school's attendance boundaries.

Students who choose this option, however, will have to find their own transportation; the district will not bus students who attend a school outside their attendance boundaries.

District officials said affected parents will be notified of the changes in attendance boundaries.