Kane School Districts Dodge Countywide Consolidation

Tri-Cities school officials are breathing a little easier now that Illinois legislators have abandoned a proposal to consolidate school districts throughout the state by allowing only one district per county.

“I don’t think that would have worked well for our district,” said Don Schlomann, superintendent of School District 303 in St. Charles.  “It is not the best solution to the consolidation issue.”

Schlomann is not alone in his opinion.

“I can’t say we’re that relieved, because none of us expected this to go anywhere,” said Kris Monn, assistant superintendent of Batavia School District 101. "It obviously doesn't make sense for this area."

House Bill 1886, sponsored by Rep. Robert Rita (D-28th) of south suburban Cook County, would have dissolved all school districts in Illinois in July 2012 and reorganized the schools into one district per county. In Kane County, the measure would have joined 177 schools in nine existing districts into one governmental agency that would share one administrative staff and one board of education. Rita withdrew the bill from consideration Wednesday after it ran into strong resistance, according to a New Lenox Patch.com story by Ben Feldheim and Amanda Luevano.

Kent Mutchler, superintendent of Geneva School District 304, predicted earlier this week that the countywide school district plan would fall by the wayside.

“There would be too much to work out to make this happen,” he said. “This is such an early stage in Gov. Pat Quinn’s drive to eliminate two-thirds of the state’s school districts) that no one plan has been chosen.”

Mutchler said it would make more sense to combine K-8 and high school districts that serve the same areas into K-12 unit districts like District 304 and its neighbors, districts 101 and 303. Schlomann noted that all public schools in Kane County belong to unit districts.

District 304 Board of Education candidate Robert Cabeen said he thinks the countywide district plan would work better in rural areas than in urban areas with more schools and higher populations.

“I know a school superintendent in a small district near Knoxville, and (that person is) making a similar salary to what school superintendents around here make, even though they’re managing larger districts with more issues,” he said. “It would be easier to consolidate districts downstate and around Galesburg because they’re so small to begin with and because the areas they cover are more homogenous with each other.”

Fellow candidate George Jackowiec noted that it would be hard to combine school districts in the Tri-Cities with districts in other parts of the county because those districts have different demographics and educational goals.

Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke said he wouldn’t mind seeing some consolidation of school district administrations, but that the change would have to take place during a decade or more to work.

“Should this take place, it would have to be a slow, meticulous process,” he said. “I don’t think you could arbitrarily slam-bang a bunch of districts together in a year. You’d need a 15- to 20-year lead time to work everything out. For one thing, all the districts involved would have to pay off their outstanding bonds so that one district wouldn’t be assuming another district’s debt.”

Residents of the affected districts also would have to agree on what types of classes the combined district would offer and what standard of academic achievement it would strive for before they could share the same tax rate, he added.

"A lot of difficult choices are being made (about how to fund Illinois public schools)," Schlomann concluded. "We just hope those choices don't compromise our ability to provide quality educations to our students."