Lincoln-Way school board decides on school closure option

NEW LENOX – Lincoln-Way District 210 school board members are now focused on closing one of the district’s four schools to resolve its dire finances and will determine if an August meeting may be the time to decide which one.

Lincoln-Way school board members unanimously approved at a meeting Thursday night to ditch two proposed cost-saving options: cutting a class and extracurricular activities, and a tax increase referendum. Now they are focused on only one: closing a school to reduce its roughly $5 million deficit over the next several years.

Board President Kevin Molloy said at the next meeting, scheduled for Aug. 13, board members will decide if they have enough information to move forward with closing a school. He said it was a “50/50” chance if they would decide on which specific school to shut down.

“We’re not going to rush into it full steam,” Molloy said after the meeting.

Board member Christopher McFadden said he thought in order to ensure students at Lincoln-Way are educated and prepared for the future going forward, school officials need to consider closing a school.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said.

District leaders initially denied rumors they were planning to close a school. But it was among several options they eventually would consider in the face of financial issues that have plagued the district for several years, leading to staff and program reductions.

Closing a school – yielding savings of about $5.2 million – appeared to draw down Lincoln-Way’s deficit the quickest among all options, with a project surplus of $214,548 achieved in fiscal year 2018.

Much to the delight of the packed audience at Lincoln-Way Central, school board members proposed seeking an outside consultant and examining boundaries more thoroughly, as well as creating more boundary scenarios for school closures.

Before board members settled on which deficit reduction option they planned to go with, Lincoln-Way Superintendent Scott Tingley gave a more detailed analysis of several school closure options. Those options were broadly divided into two options based on keeping junior high schools together or drawing boundary lines.

Tingley has said fall 2016 would be when a school would close. He has insisted he’s not in negotiations with anyone to sell a school building.

After board members decided not to pursue any educational cuts at Thursday’s meeting, they then chose not to move forward with a tax increase referendum, fearing it was “Band-Aid” solution. Board member Christopher Kosel said they owed residents no tax raises, and board member Arvid Johnson said the option would not take Lincoln-Way off the state’s financial watch list for another three years.

Tingley produced an analysis of closing each of Lincoln-Way’s four schools based on functional capacity for the 2016-2017 school year that looked at room-by-room analysies, room changes and other factors. Board members had questions on whether a school could be reopened after it was closed and if a school could be sold.

Tingley said if a closed school were reopened, the district would have to bring back up to compliance code. He said colleges and universities are struggling financially and haven’t expressed interest in buying a building, and he’s received no inquiries from others.

Board member Christine Glatz suggested Lincoln-Way Central could be closed, with district offices still running, and school officials could re-open the school down the road.

Thursday’s meeting drew a huge crowd of residents, many of them wearing shirts of Lincoln-Way schools they supported. Some of them suggested school officials seek alternative funding sources and create a citizen advisory committee. Karin Bouse, whose son attends Lincoln-Way North, said she doesn’t want to see a new school such as North shut down in favor of older schools.

“Why would you even close two state-of-the-art schools for an older school?” she said.