Charles Quentin School to close in 2009
Though Charles Quentin Elementary School's Paw Pride carries on, the Lake Zurich district school will cease to exist after next school year.
After several meetings over the course of many months, the Lake Zurich Unit District 95 school board voted unanimously Thursday night to close the school at 21250 W. Shirley Road, Palatine, at the end of the 2008-09 academic year.
The school's roughly 373 students in kindergarten through fifth grade will be distributed among the other five district elementary schools. Officials propose adding classrooms at May Whitney and Sarah Adams schools to house additional Charles Quentin students.
School board members acknowledged the decision was painful but necessary to consolidate the district's six elementary schools into five buildings after declining elementary student enrollment.
The choice was based on an outside demographer's enrollment projections that show stable or declining elementary student enrollment over the next five years, the age and condition of Charles Quentin School itself, and what it would cost to repair it, as well as underutilization of other district buildings.
"There is no political will for a referendum in the district and we don't have enough money to fix everything in the district, and it was a crummy choice but we had to pick and choose," District 95 school board President Kathy Brown said. "Enrollment has been declining for eight years and we have been waiting to make a decision for two years, and that's not a great atmosphere, either."
Charles Quentin parents have been struggling to accept the inevitable since the administration first recommended the school's closure about a year ago.
Yet many parents question whether the school board fully thought through the impact of closing the school and the accuracy of recent enrollment projections.
Earlier demographic projections showed an increase in elementary student enrollment, which prompted the school district to build its sixth elementary school in Hawthorn Woods in 2004.
In the worst-case scenario, those projections show the district would have 100 fewer elementary students in five years.
"I feel you're voting without looking at all the issues," said Mary Fran Graunke, who has a kindergartner and a first-grader at Charles Quentin.
Parent Susan Fava asked the school board to defer any decision until Lake Zurich conducts a special census for new population numbers.
Yet school board members repeatedly assured the decision was an economic one.
District 95 is faced with possibly spending anywhere from $6 million to roughly $40 million to replace, repair and fulfill critical facilities needs at all district schools.
Officials estimate the cost of adding classrooms at May Whitney and Sarah Adams, and making repairs and improvements to other buildings, as recommended in the district's short-term facilities plan, could run up to $3 million in the 2010 fiscal year.
It would cost roughly $1.6 million annually for the following six years to bring the district's facilities up to at least "fair" condition, per the facilities report.
District officials estimated the cost to keep Charles Quentin open for the next 10 years at roughly $7 million. The district anticipates saving $390,000 by closing the school originally built in 1961 with later additions.
The district is establishing a boundary committee that will start work on redistricting this summer. Applications for anyone interested in being part of the committee will be posted today on the district's Web site www.lz95.org.