Lincoln Elementary parents challenge Dist. 303's enrollment projections
Lincoln Elementary parents knew going into Thursday night's meeting about pending school closures in St. Charles that their building was a big target. And they came prepared to move the bull's-eye.
Lincoln is the oldest, smallest and least energy-efficient school in the district. It can't accommodate students with special needs very well. That's why its slated for closure in two of the three scenarios that involve change in St. Charles Unit District 303.
Parents didn't dispute any of those flaws. They also mostly supported the idea that state lawmakers could blow an $18 million hole in the district's budget via a change in the funding formula, a property tax freeze and/or a shifting in pension costs back to the district.
Parents did, however, wage a full-fledged attack on the other main force driving building closure discussions — declining enrollment.
Denton Morris, an engineering physicist at Fermilab, came forward with his own projections indicating there will be enough students, especially at the elementary level, to justify keeping Lincoln open for the foreseeable future.
Morris said he doesn't see much justification in the numbers for doomsday scenarios about enrollment other than “a feeling” embraced by the committee of citizens who produced the projections using birthrates, housing data and a demographic study.
“You're predicting a drop greater than the Great Recession, greater than in the foreclosure crisis,” Morris said. “We'll actually see a slow increase in enrollment. Yet we're cutting functional capacity at the bottom end.”
Superintendent Don Schlomann countered that even without using the worst-case scenario, there seems to be little chance the district's overall population will be grow beyond 12,000 students within the next decade. The district has about 12,500 students now, and there's already lot of empty space in district buildings, he said.
Lincoln itself is about 50 students down from just a few years ago. The district owes it to the taxpayers to operate as efficiently as possible, Schlomann said. And the future use of Lincoln, even if it stays open, begs for big change no matter what.
“I get that people love Lincoln,” Schlomann said. “Education is the same as what it used to be. We have a lot more special ed kids. The expectation of those special ed kids is to go to their home school, and that's a problem for Lincoln. When you're looking for efficiencies, and you're trying to find out where's the best mix to make us the most efficient we can, Lincoln had to be on the (closure) list.”
Lincoln parents, like Wasco parents Wednesday night, urged the district to wait a little while to see where enrollment and state funding projections start to pan out before making any school closure decisions that can't be reversed. That means embracing the status quo, which Schlomann agreed is a reasonable option.
“If you want to wait and keep the status quo, tell that to the (school) board,” Schlomann said.
There are 10 remaining public forums on the pending school closures. They will end in mid-November. The school board is expected to make a decision in December.