D303 forums will shape use of taxes

Residents and business owners in the St. Charles Unit District 303 attendance area will have a chance to debate the use of money and educational direction for the largest taxing body in the area at an upcoming series of community forums.

District 303 officials have used the Summit 303 forums to debate everything from student suicide to the need for better schools. Indeed, Summit 303 is what spawned the district’s most recent tax increase pitch.

The district put a $114 million proposal on the ballot in April 2009 that sought to rebuild or renovate all the district’s middle schools and what was at the time known as Davis Elementary. That effort failed.

Superintendent Don Schlomann said taxpayers probably won’t see another referendum on the ballot spawned by Summit 303 this time.

“This is the opportunity for our community to come in and discuss these issues,” he said.

Those issues include a possible revamping of the entire way students are educated in the district. Illinois already is implementing new learning standards with different goals than the old No Child Left Behind legislation pushed. Those standards include different ways of measuring student learning as well as a new emphasis on technology and foreign language that will allow students to compete in a global economy.

Those changes will collide with District 303’s plummeting enrollment and a local economy that’s repeatedly shown an aversion to most tax increases in recent years.

Birthrates fell in the outlying areas of the district for the last three years. That’s resulted in the district’s enrollment falling by about 100 to 200 students annually. Schlomann credits the drop to a lack of new housing developments in the district as well as a stall in housing turnover that would normally bring younger families into the area.

Schlomann said experts and district staffers have some ideas about changes they’d like to make in local schools, but they want community feedback as well as outside ideas to consider.

Schlomann said he could see the community expressing an interest for more magnet type schools as the level of success of the Davis and Richmond grade level centers is measured. He said he also is open to the idea of a year-round school site and any other ideas that will create a more flexible, “entrepreneurial” education for local students.

The first Summit 303 forum is Feb. 1. All the forums will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Kane County Fairgrounds. District officials are asking the public to attend and enter the grounds near the Moose Lodge on Route 38 and Randall Road. More information is available at www.d303.org.