Change is buzz word in Dist. 202

Lisle schools may be small in size but mighty newsworthy this year with a retiring superintendent and talk of building a new elementary center on the horizon.

Unit District 202 tackled one major issue -- contracts for its 140 full-time teachers - earlier this week.

Today nearly 1,700 students return to the long-standing goal of improving achievement, Superintendent Peter Lueck said, enforced with new initiatives that will provide the district with an immediate feedback to gauge learning.

The Daily Herald recently sat down with Lueck to discuss the year ahead and his final months at the helm of District 202.

Q. What is your goal for the year?

A. One of our most important (issues) is making the transition to having a new assistant superintendent for business affairs (Keith Filipiak) and making sure that everything that office supports -- everything from transportation to food service to insurance to contracts, and of course the financial piece of district investments -- all that is shared in how we previously did things.

As a district, in the coming year we are going to be working to develop improvement initiatives before we take on more. Last year we started working on professional learning communities. We will probably have that as a focus for the coming year: allowing our teachers to take control of how we improve our curricular program and allowing them to have a direct say in how we need to do things differently.

Q. What's going on with the district's facilities?

A. A facilities plan was completed in November 2002 with a number of things that need to be done and options of how to address that. Part of the equation for us is money. Shortly thereafter the board made a decision that it's more important for us to have a sound education fund to run the programs in the buildings that we have. Fortunately the voters were supportive and we had the tax increase referendum in 2004 of about 45 cents. That was determined to be the higher priority.

To gather in more dollars for facilities after a referendum is difficult. The taxpayers are doing a great job of supporting our programs so when the right time is to go back to our voters and see if there's support for doing extensive work on facilities has yet to be seen. We know the (junior high) was built in the '50s and Schiesher Elementary School -- a least some parts of it are just as old or almost as old. Although we've kept up with the repairs, a home that's built in the 1950s is built with different technology than a home that's built in 2005 or 2007.

No differently than other districts in DuPage County, this is something that will more so be on the forefront in regard to how we provide for students in the next 25 or 30 years.

Q. Is this issue solved with fix-ups or a new building?

A. I think the ideal is to be able to build new. The cost per square foot of renovating is more expensive than construction. I think our board understands that over the next two to three years those are the decisions that need to be made. So I suspect that some of those discussions will become more earnest this year. (I imagine that building will) more than likely be an elementary center that will be able to house all of our K-5 programs in one location.

Q. This is your last year in District 202. Is there anything that you really want to get done this year?

A. I think we've done a real good job of looking forward. For me personally, I want to leave everything in good shape. My goal will be to work hard and make sure that everything we've done continues and that we have a good track record in terms of plans that have been made so the next person can come in at full speed ahead in the next year.

Q. What's going on in the classrooms this year?

A. In the area of curriculum, one of the things we'll be doing is exploring reading interventions to support students at the high school level. Many people figure that reading instruction is done once students leave the elementary school, but we're finding that there are students that need additional support. Of course everything is tied to reading. And if you don't have good skills and reading comprehension then everything else that we do becomes problematic.

I previously mentioned this whole aspect of providing information back to teachers in real short turn around so they can assess student learning and then make adjustments. I think that's going to be another real important aspect of curricular work -- how we go about assessing student progress and then making adjustments as quickly as possible.

Last year we created an overview (of staff development) and worked on structures to put that in place. (This year) we're going to be allowing teachers time to plan. At the elementary level, we'll be finding time during the school day itself where teachers have common planning periods. At the junior high and high school, two days each month we'll be having students released early in the afternoons so that teachers can have quality time for planning improvement.

Q. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you'd like to tell readers?

A. Well, we kind of take pride in our small size. Sometimes because of that size we're not as visible in regard to things that are going on. That small size allows us to have a personalized approach with our students. We know most of our families and many of the people who come to Lisle stay in Lisle so we have the luxury of quite a few of our students coming in as kindergartners and staying all the way through their senior year in high school. That creates a sense of familiarity and we're also proud that many of the students who were here 20 years ago come back to the community so their children can attend school here. So I think that says something.