The School District 186 board of education is expected to go ahead with a vote Monday about whether to include Southern View Elementary School into a consolidation plan with two other schools.
The board meets at 6:30 p.m. Monday.
The board is expected to hear a report from Superintendent Jennifer Gill on three public meetings on the consolidation plan. The last of those meetings was held Tuesday at Laketown Elementary School.
The board voted to consolidate Hazel Dell and Laketown elementary schools in 2017 as part of its school facilities plan, Our Schools Our Future. That was a pretext to a November 2018 vote on a 1% sales tax hike Sangamon County, which was approved by voters.
Earlier: District 186 wraps up school consolidation hearings, here’s what comes next
At that time, the board looked at several plans but decided to build a new school combining the enrollments at an off-site.
Those plans did not consider building a new school on the present site of Laketown, a proposal by Subdistrict 4 board member Micah Miller. The plan would only take into account Hazel Dell and Laketown.
Planners for the new building said recently that a new building at the Laketown site could only accommodate 204 students.
The building would disrupt the school year, meaning that students at Laketown would have to go to a neutral site until the building is completed.
Southern View only entered into the consolidation plan within the past several weeks.
Gill said that’s when architects started taking a look at the building to consider updating some construction. The main part of the school dates back to the 1930s and was built with World War I bonds, she added.
Southern View’s dropping enrollment also played a part in the consideration, Gill said.
An eight-page guideline released by the district has touted an 11th Street site as a possibility for a new building for all three schools. The enrollment would be about 450 students.
The 13.2-acre site, which includes a building that formerly housed the corporate headquarters for H.D. Smith, a privately held pharmaceutical wholesaler, is in Southern View’s boundaries and is less than a mile from the school at 3338 S. Fifth St.
The district doesn’t own the property. It is still held by members of the Smith family.
One of the potential knottier questions would center around Southern View’s balanced calendar, meaning the school year starts in late July and has learning breaks every nine weeks.
Opponents have also questioned what might happen to the empty buildings and property values in the neighborhoods.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, [email protected], twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
