U-46 will ask voters for money to rebuild aging schools

Voters in Elgin Area School District U-46 will decide this April if the district can issue bonds to rebuild and renovate older schools.

School board members voted Monday to put a referendum question on the April ballot. The district will ask voters if it can borrow $179 million to help pay for a building program - known as Plan B - that would cost $310 million to $380 million.

The bulk of the building program focuses on rebuilding five elementary schools: Lowrie, McKinley, and Century Oaks in Elgin, Parkwood in Hanover Park and Glenbrook in Streamwood.

Lowrie and McKinley elementary schools were built in the 1800s. While the remaining three were built in the 1970s, the pod-style layout for classrooms is no longer efficient, officials said.

"Many of us have toured the older buildings, and they're not conducive to a 21st-century education," board member John Devereux said. "It's really essential to get that work done."

Though U-46 will ask for voter approval to issue $179 million in bonds to cover a portion of the building program, school board members stressed it would not increase the district's tax rate.

If voters approve the plan, the district will replace retiring debt with new debt.

The district also would rely on money in reserves and grants to cover the remaining costs of the building program.

While board member Dawn Martin voted to put the request on the April ballot, she also expressed concern that the plan does not sufficiently address building improvement needs at the middle school level.

Members of the district's Unite U-46 committee, which reviewed building needs over the past year, said one of the options they studied would have covered middle school improvements but would have resulted in a property tax rate increase.

Under that plan, known as Plan C, the district would have had to ask voters for $348 million to use toward a building program estimated to cost $460 million to $580 million. Under that plan, the tax rate would increase, and the owner of a $300,000 home would have paid the district an additional $205 a year in property taxes.

That option, however, did not receive as much support as Plan B in polls conducted by the Unite U-46 committee.

"We did get feedback in different sessions where people loved Plan C, but they leaned toward Place B because of that zero-rate increase," said Chanda Schwartz, who co-chaired the Unite U-46 committee. "And the hope was that the gap between Plan B and Plan C could be covered in the future."

The district plans to transition to a full middle school model.

After Hawk Hollow Elementary School in Bartlett is converted to a middle school, the district would move sixth-grade students there and and to other middle schools.

Currently, sixth graders attend their classes in elementary school buildings.

U-46 Superintendent Tony Sanders said the district's middle schools would transition to housing sixth- through eighth-grade students with modest changes or renovations.