St. Charles schools to fix older campuses

St. Charles Unit District 303 residents will get their first look tonight at the future of their local elementary schools tonight that will involve a lot of hard thinking about how much they are willing to pay to make some long-sought basic improvements.

It's no secret that the district is loaded with many older buildings. Some, such as Lincoln Elementary, have infrastructure put in place long before any current residents of the district were even born.

No air conditioning, questions about mold and general air quality, basic access to schools and classrooms for the disabled, and building security that's behind the curve compared to other districts in the area are all shortcomings district parents have griped about for many years.

With that in mind, the district embarked on a full study of every building in the district last March.

The study took a look at all the areas parents have said need improvements, including the actual size of classrooms themselves. The goal was to give each building a poor or satisfactory rating. Buildings in the district with poor ratings, and there are a few of those, all received a full plan for how to move them to satisfactory grades.

Those plans, and an early look at what such improvements might cost, will be presented to district residents tonight.

At least 500 people are expected to attend for a discussion that will focus entirely on the 12 elementary schools in the district. All 12 schools were found to need some form of remodeling or reconstruc- tion.

Davis Elementary will be the highlighted example, but each school in the district will have a meeting devoted exclusively to its needs in the coming months.

Later this month, a presentation on the needs of the middle and high schools will occur. Then next month, the district will host a meeting devoted entirely to a discussion about the costs of the construction, how to pay for it, and what is a realistic burden on local taxpayers in the current sluggish economy.

The first presentation is at 7 tonight at Charlestowne Mall.