District 204 board OKs around $9 million in bids for Neuqua Valley facilities work, green lights $15 million bond issue

The Indian Prairie School District 204 board has approved a little more than $9 million in bids for continued facilities work at Neuqua Valley High School.

The school board also voted during its Monday, Nov. 9, meeting to OK a $15 million bond issuance to pay for districtwide renovations.

District 204 is undergoing a major facilities overhaul after voters in 2024 approved a proposal from the district to sell up to $420 million in bonds to pay for building improvements.

The bonds are to be paid for using a continuation of an existing 37-cent property tax per $100 of equalized assessed value that would otherwise have expired at the end of 2026, meaning the tax rate for residents in terms of their contribution to capital projects is to effectively remain flat as a result of the referendum question’s passage.

Since the referendum question passed, the district has been proceeding with work on projects across district buildings that are set to extend through 2032.

The renovations include school-specific work at Waubonsie Valley High School, Neuqua Valley High School, Metea Valley High School, the Birkett Freshman Center and Gregory and Hill middle schools, along with districtwide safety and security upgrades, LED lighting installations and other infrastructure projects.

About $198 million of the planned work had been completed or was in progress as of last month, with another $100 million in projects planned to start in 2027.

A little over half the referendum question-funded work is going toward renovations at two of the district’s three high schools — Waubonsie Valley in Aurora and Neuqua Valley in Naperville. Much of that work is already underway, with additional renovations planned for this year.

At Neuqua Valley, the work includes significant building additions that will allow freshman students — who for more than 20 years have attended class at the Birkett Freshman Center, a building a little less than a mile from the main campus — to join their upperclassmen peers in the main high school building starting in 2027.

At the Nov. 9 school board meeting, the board considered and OK’d bids for work at Neuqua.

One bid package was for a little under $8.2 million in work at the school, for which the district is working with Bulley & Andrews, according to documents.

The district expects additional bid packages related to the work at Neuqua to come to the board for approval in December, per a district memo.

Another bid proposal, amounting to a little under $900,000, for synthetic turf and a goal post pad for a practice field at Neuqua, was also approved.

The district is proposing a second field turf at Neuqua Valley, located on the property just west of the tennis courts. The district is currently in discussion with the Naperville Park District about a potential intergovernmental agreement for shared use of the field, a district memo indicated, and school district officials anticipate the field being a “net zero” cost project. Work on the field is expected to start in the spring and be completed by fall 2027.

Also on Nov. 9, the District 204 school board considered and approved a $15 million bond issuance to pay for the ongoing referendum question-funded work.

This will be the district’s third bond issuance following the passage of the 2024 referendum question. The district did its first bond sale in 2024, according to District 204 Chief School Business Official Matt Shipley, and another in 2025.

The district had initially intended to do only four issuances in total, Shipley said. But the one approved is a modification to its original plan. Doing a bond sale now will reduce the amount the district issues later, he noted, pointing out that the total amount the district will ultimately issue is not changing.

Doing this issuance will allow the district to accelerate some of its capital work, Shipley said. The bond sale is slated for early December, a district memo said.

The district will still need to issue another more than $200 million in bonds to pay for the facilities work, with future bond sales planned for 2027 and 2029.

mmorrow@chicagotribune.com