It’s 7 p.m. The members of the Board of Education shuffle out of a small room, located toward the back of the Administrative Board Room. They have just come out of their closed session.
One-by-one they take their seats. Important issues within District 158 lie ahead of them tonight. One thing’s for certain: tonight, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
The Board of Education met tonight to discuss many troubling matters within the district. For the second month in a row, boundary changes were a hot topic.
The student population at Leggee has been growing rapidly. So fast, in fact, that the Board of Education must make a decision before the next school year in order to avoid overcrowding within Leggee’s classrooms. Leggee will soon have an average class size larger than any other schools within the district.
This is a difficult task for the BOE. They have made it clear that many factors come into play when considering changing the district’s boundary lines.
“We want these boundary changes to have long lasting effects,” said Dr. Burkey. “The people that did this 10 years ago, they got it right. It must have been difficult for parents to have their kids changing schools so often during the high growth years.”
One of the biggest things that the BOE stressed during this meeting was that communication with parents is important. They plan to send out letters to all those who will be affected by the boundary changes, stating which students within the household will be changing schools, and what school they will be going to.
“This comes down to individual kids,” said Dr. Burkey.” Parents need to know what is going on so that they can find out what their options are for their children.”
The BOE has also taken into account how the students may be affected personally by these boundary changes. They are aware that by changing boundaries within the district that they will potentially be placing many students in the position of being “the new kids at school.”
In order to avoid this, the BOE has decided that students moving into third grade will switch schools. This way everyone is in the same boat due to the school change that is already present between fourth and fifth grade within the district.
With all of the excitement over the boundary changes, parents have naturally gotten involved with the movement, sending emails and voicing their opinion on various options that are available to the BOE in making this decision.
Some parents are more onboard with one idea than another possible option. Some parents have even suggested creating an entirely new building, or even just doing nothing.
“This is a problem for us as a school district,” said Mr. Drzal. “We do not have the resources to be able to construct an entirely new building to meet demands of the student population.We can’t just do nothing and hope for the problem to fix itself.”
Toward the end of the session, the BOE seemed quite certain that the solution to this problem was just over the horizon. With a little more discussion, this problem could become a distant memory.
The next meeting of the Board of Education takes place on April 2, in the Administrative Board Room.