District 301 OKs new boundaries

After months of planning and several weeks of community forums, it's official.

Aiming to even out enrollment at its elementary and middle schools, the Central Community Unit District 301 school board unanimously approved boundary changes Tuesday.

The special board meeting at Country Trails Elementary School in Elgin was attended by several of the Burlington-based district's principals and administrators. No parents or students were there.

Next fall, about 200 students from five Elgin subdivisions will move from Prairie View Elementary to Country Trails Elementary. The subdivisions, divided into five boundary sections, are Providence, Williamsburg, Tall Oaks, Montague Forest and Russinwood.

All are south of Route 20 and bounded by Russell Road to the West and Randall Road to the east.

District data from last March show that Prairie View, in Elgin, had 648 students enrolled. Country Trails, also in Elgin, had 188.

According to enrollment projections, next year Country Trails will have about 388 students. Prairie View will have 470 students.

Attendance boundaries also will be shifted along what the district calls the "Corron Road corridor"- Bowes Road to the north and McDonald Road to the south and the boundary with neighboring Elgin Area School District U-46 to the east.

This shift would move nine current Prairie View students to Howard B. Thomas Elementary School in Burlington and 10 students from Central Middle School in Burlington to Prairie Knolls Middle School in Elgin. Eight students would be moved from Prairie Knolls to Central.

All students who attend Prairie View and Country Trails elementaries will now be on track to attend Prairie Knolls Middle School. Students who attend Howard B. Thomas and Lily Lake Elementary in Maple Park will attend Central Middle School.

Assistant Superintendent Todd Stirn, who will take the helm of the 3,300-student district this summer, said students requiring special district services will be taken to the school that features the program that meets their needs.

In recent weeks, the district held several community forums about the changes. While well attended, Stirn said parents posed more technical questions than objections to the move.

The district's last boundary change took place in March 2007, months before Country Trails Elementary and Prairie Knolls were set to open.

The boundaries, according to Superintendent Brad Hawk, "were developed due to housing needs of the district at that specific time."

With only two new homes in the district last December, Hawk told community members in a recent memo that it became clear that shifting boundaries was necessary.

While it previously was projected that a future school construction referendum would be needed by 2011, Hawk said the proposed boundary changes would postpone such a move, "for numerous years depending on how quickly the housing market rebounds."