Most Dist. 300 students to stay at current school

Faced with a choice to stay at their current school or move to a new school, most families in Community Unit District 300 decided to stay.

The District 300 school board last month approved new attendance boundaries for the middle and high schools that shifted hundreds of students from crowded east-side schools to under-capacity west-side schools.

The board, however, decided to allow current seventh-graders and high-school students to remain at their school even if they live in new attendance boundaries, as long as they provide their own transportation.

Only about 42 percent of students who had the option to stay at their school chose to attend a new school, according to District 300.

District estimates show both Dundee-Crown and Jacobs high schools will still be under capacity next year -- even with the 189 high-school students who are staying.

But if District 300's enrollment projections hold, Jacobs will be over capacity in three years.

Dundee Middle School, the only other school where students had to choose whether to stay, will be well under capacity for several years, the district estimates.

When they allowed students to stay at their school, District 300 board members said they expected this would mitigate the impact of boundary changes in the short term.

"We're still going to be OK," board President Joe Stevens said this week, while expressing concern about the future.

"It would not shock me if we have to look at this again in three to five years," Stevens said.

The board president did not think what he once called his "nightmare scenario" -- a crowded Jacobs with mobile classrooms -- would come to pass.

"I have a feeling that once the year is under way or over, there will be more kids who'll decide to transfer," Stevens said. "I don't think we're going to have to have mobiles. That would be a real last resort."