McHenry’s Landmark School to close; District 15 votes late Tuesday to end year-round program

Students who started classes last week at McHenry’s 130-year-old Landmark School will be the last group of pupils taking classes there.

On Tuesday night, the McHenry School District 15 board voted 4-1 – with one board member voting “here” – to close the school at the end of the 2024-25 school year.

Just one of the board members spoke to the audience at McHenry Middle School, where three public hearings were held to get community input on closing the school earlier this year.

“This is one of the hardest days since any of us came on this board,” said board member Patrick DeGeorge, who said he had trouble sleeping the night before as he contemplated his vote.

“To the community: Thank you. Thank you for your concern and your compassion” as the board studied the issue, DeGeorge said.

He was the sole no vote on the question of closing the school. Board member Matthew Stauner said “here” during the voice vote, which would be counted as an abstain, Superintendent Josh Reitz said.

The board was one member short. On Friday, Emily Jay resigned her seat on the board. She had not turned her Statement of Economic Interest to the McHenry County Clerk’s Office in a timely manner, Reitz said, and had to resign her seat per Illinois election rules.

[ Huntley trustee says she was forced off board over Statement of Economic Interest ]

The District 15 board has 60 days to fill that seat, Reitz said.

One Landmark parent, Christopher Moore, said he planned to apply for that open seat and if unsuccessful, run for the school board in the Spring 2025 elections. With Jay’s resignation, five seats are open for election.

“We are coming for your seats,” Moore said after the gavel had fallen for the board to go into a closed session.

“I don’t think they were listening. They were going through the scenario” of having the public hearings, as state law dictates before a school can be closed, Moore said, adding “they already made up their minds and it doesn’t matter” what families wanted.

Parent Carey Miles, who also spoke to the board before the vote, repeated what several parents said during the public hearings: They wanted to keep Landmark School’s year-round program, even if that was at a school other than Landmark.

Landmark has offered a year-round calendar since 2001. As a school-of-choice, families had to apply and go through a lottery to attend there, but if an older sibling attended classes there, younger siblings were automatically accepted.

The district has said since April that one of the issues facing the school was the cost to bring the building up to modern standards. The district’s engineering consultants estimated a price tag of between $10 million to $12 million to bring the building to the same standards as other schools in the district.

Although plans are to now shutter the building, what will happen to it next has not been determined, Board President Chad Mihevc said.

“That has not been a part of the discussion to this point,” Mihevc said.

McHenry City Council Alderman Vic Santi, 1st Ward, attended the meeting.

“This is a very tough decision” for any board, Santi said. He also reiterated that the District 15 vote to close the school has nothing to do with the city’s plans for housing, parking and retail developments across Boone Creek from the building and nearby on Waukegan Road.

“It is District 15 property,” Santi said.

For the 200 children now attending classes at Landmark, what comes next for them is their school year, and then beginning the process of transitioning students into the schools they are assigned to, Reitz said.

The motion approved by the board spelled out some of that transition, including that “all students not otherwise graduating” would be sent to their “home schools” for the 2025-26 school year.

Some of those students will no longer be in McHenry schools. Some parents have indicated they plan to homeschool, and others said they planned to move out of the district, Moore said.

“This program is why they came here” to McHenry, he said.