St. Charles School Board updates families on coming enrollment changes

With changes to enrollment zones and several school facilities coming this summer, St. Charles School District 303 board members gave an update on the process at their March 11 school board meeting.

As approved by the board in July 2023, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, Lincoln Elementary will be repurposed to house staff and transition programming, Fox Ridge will reopen as an elementary school, early childhood care will be moved to the Haines Center and Richmond and Davis will have new grade level configurations.

In order to create an equitable disbursement of students amid these changes, school board members voted in February to approve new enrollment zone boundaries for middle and elementary schools across the district.

Almost 21% of elementary students and about 20% of middle school students will be at new schools in the 2024-25 school year. The only enrollment zone boundaries that will not change are those at the high school level.

Interactive maps of the new boundary lines have been published on the district website. Residents can look up their new attendance zone by entering their address.

School principals will begin communicating with families residing within the new boundaries this spring.

Audra Christenson, executive director of secondary education, said as of March 11 the district had received 76 requests for transfer from high school and middle school levels. The deadline for submitting a request for transfer is March 31. The requests will be reviewed and their approval or denial will be communicated to families by the third week in April.

All K-8 building principals will be sending personalized welcome letters to families before spring break via email and traditional mail. Families will have opportunities to engage with their new school faculty and administrators during spring break through tours, meet and greets and other social events. Dates and times of these events will be determined by each school’s principal.

The intra-district transfer window for elementary school students will open May 15 and close July 1. Transfer requests will be reviewed and their approval or denial will be communicated to families at least three weeks before the first day of school.

In honor of the closing of Lincoln Elementary School, the district will host an end of year celebration in May to honor current and past students and staff. A date for the celebration has not yet been determined.

In November 2023, the board approved a new grade level configuration for Richmond and Davis that includes transitioning to K-5 buildings and housing the entire dual-language program at Richmond Intermediate.

While the board originally planned for the entire dual-language program to be transferred to Richmond beginning in the 2024-25 school year, without the addition of mobile classrooms, Richmond lacks the capacity to house the program next year. Instead, the board voted in February to remediate the existing mobile classrooms at Davis Primary to house half of the dual-language program for the 2024-25 school year until a permanent six-classroom addition is constructed at Richmond for occupancy in the 2025-26 school year.

In the 2024-25 school year, grades K-2 of the dual-language program will remain at Davis and grades 3-5 will continue at Richmond. Upon completion of the addition at Richmond, the entire dual-language program will be relocated to Richmond and the mobile classrooms at Davis will be decommissioned before the 2025-26 school year.

Board President Heidi Fairgrieve calculated that once the changes to Richmond and Davis are complete, almost 60% of the district’s dual language students would be relocated and would have to be bused to Richmond Intermediate. The resulting concentration of free and reduced lunch students was a major sticking point for concerned families throughout the boundary zone discussion process.