Growing pains

By: Sarah KarpAt the stoplight on the corner of Illinois Route 25 and County Line Road in west suburban Carpentersville, an embankment behind an old-fashioned gas station looks as though it should give way to lines of wheat and corn. But instead there are lines of homes, each one only slightly different than the next, along curving streets.

Where the homes stop, construction vehicles sit poised to build more.

Families are flocking to the far-flung northwestern suburbs near Elgin for brand-new homes with prices much less than those in suburbs closer to Chicago, said Kenneth Arndt, superintendent of Community Unit School District 300.

But the housing explosion has brought an influx of more than 2,000 students in the past five years. And the school district has been scrambling to keep up with this growth, Arndt said.

The school district educates 17,811 children from elementary school through high school and serves all or part of 15 towns including Carpentersville, Lake in the Hills and West Dundee. The district spends $7,674 per student in school funding---less than the state average of $8,786.

New homes bring new property taxes, but it can take from 18 months to two years for the county to assess the new property, collect the taxes and distribute them to taxing bodies, like the school district. The district is mostly in Kane County with smaller portions in McHenry, Cook and DeKalb counties. As it awaits property tax revenue from the new homes, the school district has to hire teachers and teacher’s aides to make sure that class sizes don’t balloon. Despite their efforts, just in the past five years, the average class size in the district has grown from 24 to 27. “We are having to upfront the costs and, because the children keep coming, we never catch up,” Arndt said.

With expanding class sizes, and the threats of both operating a high school on split shifts and eliminating after-school activities, the school district asked voters for additional revenue in two separate ballot measures on March 21. Taxpayers approved both. One, a 55-cent property tax increase per $100 of assessed valuation, will provide money to hire more than 400 new teachers. The other will yield $185 million for new construction and renovation of existing buildings. “This will allow us to maintain the good education we offer, but it still will be a basic education,” Arndt said before the election.

One of the additional costs in District 300, like some other suburban districts, is teaching English to students who come to the district speaking other languages. About 11 percent of the student body qualifies for English-as-a-second-language classes. Statewide, the average is 6.6 percent. And it’s not just Spanish, Arndt said. In fact, there are 64 different languages spoken in the district.

With the extra costs, some programs have fallen by the wayside, say district officials.

The school district used to have a grant writer who applied for competitive corporate and government funds, providing extras for the schools. That position no longer exists. Now, in order to apply for the grants, existing staff from multiple departments must collaborate on the applications, said Assistant Superintendent Tom Hay.

Technology has also suffered, Hay said. While there is a sufficient number of computers per student, Hay said the district hasn’t been able to do much thinking about incorporating technology into the curriculum. Recently, district officials developed a three-year plan that they will implement with money from the property tax increase.

Art was cut in the elementary schools in 1985 and never returned. The district has a standard, no-frills music program.

“I receive phone calls from families who have moved here from Palatine and Schaumburg, and they are astounded at the things we don’t have,” Hay said. “They are like, ‘You mean you don’t have a swing choir?’ They can’t believe it.”

While the infusion of money from the tax referenda will help take care of some of the growth issues, including the construction of four new schools, Arndt said that other issues remain.

Equity is a big one.

Before Arndt took over as superintendent, the schools in affluent neighborhoods looked like much different places than those in poorer areas, even though they were all in the same district. At some schools, parents had gotten into the habit of fundraising for supplies and resources.

Arndt said he encourages parents to help out, but he advises them to avoid buying the basics to help level the schools’ resources. “The problem [was] that we had three freshmen English classes in three high schools all using different text books,” Arndt said. “There was no consistency, and there [were] significant disparities between schools.”

Still, wide variation in test scores remain---from Meadowdale Elementary School in Carpentersville with 54 percent meeting state standards to 85 percent at Lincoln Prairie Elementary School in Lake in the Hills.