New school planning at District 56

Soil tests and a traffic study will be performed soon for a Wadsworth site where Gurnee Elementary District 56 plans to build a new school.

District 56 is forging ahead because voters on Nov. 2 granted permission to borrow $28.5 million mostly for construction of the building. Superintendent John Hutton said the goal is to break ground in the spring.

But before anything can happen on the roughly 75-acre Wadsworth property, Hutton said, the district must seek soil samples and a traffic study. That is expected to occur soon.

Hutton also said District 56 must go through the permitting process with Wadsworth village government.

If built, the new structure would replace flood-prone Gurnee Grade School off Kilbourne Road near the Des Plaines River. A major sandbagging effort to protect Gurnee Grade from flood water last occurred in 2007.

“We’d like to get this (new school) project going before we get another flood,” Hutton said this week.

Gurnee Grade School houses children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Plans call for the federal government to buy the school and demolish it, and return the property near the Des Plaines River to wetlands.

About 600 pupils in grades three through five would be accommodated at the Wadsworth school. The building would rise north of Wadsworth and Delany roads.

O’Plaine Elementary School, behind Gurnee village hall, would be reconfigured to serve kindergarten through eighth grade. Some of the $28.5 million would be used for the O’Plaine work.

Figures show District 56’s bond-and-interest fund tax rate for property owners will mostly hold steady after the $28.5 million loan is obtained. Taxpayers will cover debt for a longer period of time.

Officials say about $15 million in existing debt would be repaid by 2015. Payments made on that loan would then be used to cover the new debt.