Chicago City Wire

At its Jan 19 meeting, the West Chicago Elementary School District 33 Board of Education received a presentation on changes recommended for the district based on enrollment projections. 

The district conducted an enrollment and population trend study and learned there is a declining birth rate and the elementary-age population has slowly and continuously declined. Because there is a lack of new housing development and no strong migration into the area, the district can predict that it will continue to have lower enrollment for preschool and kindergarten classes for the next several years.

The district has been trying to figure out a way to organize the district as the current setup for elementary students and preschool has the district leasing some building and putting young kids on very long bus rides to get to buildings all over the district. The preschool populations are spread out among mostly rented buildings.

The solution proposed to the school board was to take Pioneer Elementary, which currently has local kindergarten through 5th grade students, and turn it into the district preschool building. Starting next year the district plans to send all incoming kindergartners to other buildings and slowly disperse the rest of the students so that it can use the building for preschool.

“It wasn't really optimal to be spreading the kids out again, if you spread them across the district and classrooms across the district, that still is time on busses and a very disjointed program because it is important for teachers to be together to collaborate,” Superintendent Kristina Davis told the board. “A building that's $25 million at this time really did not seem like the best choice, given the fact that we still had a very looming presence of not having buildings with the environment in terms of air conditioning. So the end of that, as you recall, we did prioritize air conditioning, but you also asked us to continue to research and look at ways that we could continue to support the preschool and come up with some other solutions.”

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

The board also discussed the dates for its meetings for the next academic year.

The board will meet again at 7 p.m. on Thursday at Leman Middle School’s community room at 238 East Hazel Street.