Book It: Only One Geneva High School—Ever

There's a St. Charles North and St. Charles East, an East Aurora and West Aurora, a flock of Napervilles and more Glenbards than you can shake a stick at—but there's only one Geneva Community High School.

And officials say that's how it's going to stay.

"Having one high school for the community is important," Superintendent Kent Mutchler said. "It has a smaller feel, yet it's large enough to offer top-notch, comprehensive programs—and that's part of our core mission to help students reach their goals." 

From a development standpoint, Geneva is more or less landlocked. Sandwiched between Batavia and St. Charles, boundaries for the city, School District 304, the Geneva Park District and Geneva Library District are shaped like a san-serif "I" running east to west. School boundaries extend farther than the city's boundaries, out to Harley Road and Bunker roads in the southern part of LaFox.

That geographic squeeze is not terrific news for growing the School District's tax base, but it's pretty good news for controlling costs over time, officials say.

If the economy turns around, there are housing-development opportunities on the far west and there will be fill-in opportunities throughout the city, as well, but the overall population growth is finite.

Geneva School District 304 has about 6,000 students now. With full build-out, the School District has projected a maximum of about 7,500 students, Mutchler said.

For the high school, which has an enrollment of about 1,970, the fully built-out student population is estimated at 2,500.

"That's given us a little bit of assurance," School Board President Mary Stith said.

Which means, for parents of students at the grade school levels and younger, no painful splits for sports teams or extracurricular programs, no drastic district realignments and no building referendums for a new high school.

"There are a lot of advantages," GCHS Principal Tom Rogers said. "As I've looked at other communities that have done the split, I've seen an incredible rivalry that's not always a good thing. The unity is gone."

Rogers said that if the economy were to turn around and home-building brought more students, the high school would look to expand to the south, on property that had been part of the Coultrap Elementary School campus.

Coultrap is closed this year, following the construction of Fabyan Elementary School, and the district is looking to move its administrative offices there. School Board meetings already take place at Coultrap.

The single high school is part of the School District's education plan, as well. Neighborhood schools feed into the two middle schools, which have balanced enrollments, mirror-image building designs and sit next to each other on Viking Drive. The twin middle schools also have parallel programs that help students transition from the elementary schools and to the high school.

"The transitions in education are sometimes difficult for kids, so we're working hard to make those transitions as easy as possible," Mutchler said.

"The high school is where the students all come together," he added. "And that's part of the sense of community that makes Geneva so special."