Board backs $87 mil rehab of Naperville Central

Naperville Unit District 203 leaders are recommending $114.9 million in facility improvements around the district including an $87.7 million renovation to Naperville Central High School.

Superintendent Alan Leis made his recommendations to the school board Monday, which will formally consider the proposal in two weeks.

If approved, the district will ask voters for a $43 million tax hike via a Feb. 5 referendum. The average taxpayer would see a property tax increase of about $82 a year for each of 20 years.

Leis said while costs are up slightly from original projections, the recommendations address the community's concern that improvements are not merely a Band-Aid approach. Most of the plan falls within the recommendations of the district's facilities task force, which spent six months studying the issue.

"The bottom line here is there is always a critical balance in my mind between doing the right thing and doing it as cost efficiently as possible," he said.

Under Leis' plan, Central would get an $87.7 million renovation on its current site that would include major remodeling to the school's three-story wing, which would house many of the core subject areas. The plan for Central also calls for moving the learning resource center, improving physical education and music spaces, reducing the number of building entrances and providing enough kitchen space to serve hot lunch to elementary schools. There would be no change to neighboring Knoch Park.

Originally major renovations had a $72 million price tag. But the district recently learned meeting codes for storm water would require an additional $5 million, and architects made additional tweaks to the designs based on feedback from Central's staff and the community.

Vice President Susan Crotty was one of the few board members to comment on Leis' recommendations and said the plan for Central is a good synthesis of ideas.

"I feel like ... we're getting everything we need programmatically for classrooms and all those different things, and we're keeping the old things that were good and continuing to use those," Crotty said. "So really it is a renovation that will last us like a new building would."

Leis' recommendations also call for a $7.3 million renovation and addition to Mill Street Elementary to build a gymnasium and improve the learning resource center and office space. The plan does not address the issue of whether to redraw the school's attendance boundaries to lessen enrollment and alleviate space concerns.

Enrollment this year is less than expected at Mill but more than projected at Elmwood Elementary, the school some Mill Street students would move into.

"I think changing attendance areas has to stay on the table as an option, but I also think it would be wrong to prematurely move students that might not have to be moved, so we just simply need more time to work those out, in my opinion," Leis said.

Also in the district's recommendations are an $11 million early childhood center and $5.2 million in improvements at Naperville North, including deepening its pool, renovating its pool locker room and possibly adding synthetic turf in the stadium and changing outside traffic flow. Security at Prairie, Ranch View and Washington would also be addressed for about $700,000. The recommendations also include $3 million in program contingencies.

The school board will hold a special meeting Dec. 3 to vote on Leis' plan.