Lockport School District 205 looks to regroup after Central Campus referendum results

Lockport High School District 205′s highly debated referendum, which asked voters to approve $85 million in bonds to refurbish the district’s 115-year-old Central Campus, appears to have failed after months of campaigning, tours of the building, Q&A sessions and additional emergency construction after a ceiling in the school collapsed in November.

By 10 p.m. Tuesday night, no votes led by 963, representing 53.8% of the vote on a night with very low turnout. The defeat was spearheaded by voters in Homer Glen’s precincts, and only 15.4% of eligible voters participated.

Only one out of 19 precincts in Homer Township voted in favor of the bond proposal.

Seven precincts in Lockport Township also leaned toward rejecting the plan.

“The district has assembled a citizen advisory committee to give the community a voice in plans for Central Campus. The committee is comprised of residents with differing views but a unified commitment to renovating and preserving the 115-year-old school,” District 205 said in a statement released Wednesday morning. “With the failure of the bond referendum, the board of education will consider alternative courses of action to address the school’s time-worn infrastructure, such as the 70-year-old boiler and the antiquated electrical system.

“Work to address the ceiling failure has been underway for weeks. All ceilings that were of concern, specifically those installed in 1929, have been removed. It is anticipated that Central Campus will be reopened in time for the fall semester, barring any unforeseen setbacks.”

The district said it is moving forward as quickly as possible with remediation at Central Campus.

“We’re proud of the work we did trying to inform the community,” Tim Russ, a Lockport Township High School Foundation member and head of the referendum committee, said Tuesday night as results were coming in. “If we lose, the administration will have to reconvene and decide what the next steps are.”

The referendum asked the community to approve of issuing bonds that would be used to renovate Central, which is currently used as a freshman center and for special education programs.

In addition to the ceiling repairs, which are being paid for from existing cash reserves and insurance funds, the building is in need of additional renovations including new heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems; Americans With Disabilities Act-compliant accessibility modifications; refurbished bathrooms; a new roof and windows; and could benefit from classroom modernization.

The planned renovation also would replace the antiquated pool in the school’s basement with more classroom space and reorganize the interior of the building to keep departments better grouped and provide more office space for staff.

The referendum and renovations already were in the works before the Nov. 1 ceiling collapse on the third floor, which made the building unusable in the short term and resulted in the Class of 2027 attending school at the empty Lincoln-Way North campus in Frankfort Square this year, thanks to a special agreement with Lincoln-Way School District 210.

The emergency work only served to draw more attention to the urgent need for repairs.

“Right now, the district’s No. 1 goal is still to get the freshmen back in the building by fall, and they are on track to do that because the ceiling work is already underway,” Russ said.

The rest of the repairs still are a matter to be contended with.

As Superintendent Robert McBride has repeatedly acknowledged in recent months, the ceilings were not on the district’s radar in terms of issues that could be problematic in the building, compared with the boilers or the roof. That shows just how in-need of a renovation the historic campus is, since a failure of one of those systems could have the district back in the position it is now.

“The boiler and windows and roof are all still at risk,” Russ said. “Something has to give. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when something happens again. That could be dangerous for students, or it could put us back in this position where we have to displace students and rent another facility, which is costing the district a lot of money.”

This is the seventh referendum the district has proposed in the past 20 years to remedy the Central Campus issues, although all six previous measures – which would have constructed an entirely new school on district-owned property in Homer Glen – were deemed too costly and failed.

Critics of the most recent measure argued that the renovations would be too expensive for a building that already is so old, suggesting that the district should build a new facility – which Russ noted would cost three times as much as the proposed plan – or expand East Campus to accommodate the freshmen.

That is an option that also would be expensive and pose logistical issues.

Others oppose any measure that would raise taxes. Neither camp could come up with a viable plan of what to do with Central if its use was discontinued, as the board noted there were no parties interested in buying the building and demolition would be an expensive option.

The idea behind instead investing in renovating Central was meant to save residents money and address the problems more quickly, as construction of a new facility would take years and the renovation potentially could be completed while students still are using Central with some strategic planning.

The district originally was presented with a plan to do more drastic renovations at the school, including demolishing the theater, cafeteria and media center to create a new multipurpose space, which would have cost an additional $10 million to $30 million.

That idea was turned down in favor of the more economical option of addressing the building’s most pressing needs.

“There’s going to be a lot of discussions,” District 205 board President Ann Lopez-Caneva said. “We do have a few options, but if it doesn’t pass, we have challenges ahead.”

Lopez-Caneva said there are three options the board already has considered as fallbacks. Those options include putting the measure back on the ballot in November, when voter turnout likely will be much higher; do as much maintenance as possible each year to repair little things at a budget of $500,000 to $1 million per year; or move the freshmen students to East Campus and adopt a split schedule.

“I’m not a fan of that option,” she said of the split schedule. “My kids went through that, and it was terrible. Kids were exhausted, and I almost never saw my son.”

Russ said the district also could theoretically take out some bonds without voter approval, but it would not be close to the $85 million needed to enact the proposed renovation plan.

“This is just confusing,” Russ said. “We’ve listened six times to the voters saying, ‘We don’t want to build a new building,’ so one has to wonder what the intention of the community is.”