SWAN-Elgin

ELGIN — With several of its schools bursting at the seams, the School District U46 board this week approved guidelines for changing attendance boundaries for the 2010-11 school year.

Ten elementary schools and one middle school have from 1 percent to 30 percent more students than classroom space to accommodate them, according to a report conducted by outside consultants.

That report, compiled over the last year, notes that while the district has several schools above their designed student capacity, U46 also has “plenty of seats at elementary and middle schools; they’re just not in the right areas,” district spokesman Tony Sanders said.

To begin the process of changing attendance boundaries, the district drafted guidelines for the Citizens Advisory Council, a volunteer panel that advises the school board and administration on school issues.

The guidelines include looking at schools’ capacities, excluding mobile classrooms; feeder school alignment; distance and travel time of students to school; natural boundaries such as wetlands and railroad tracks; opportunity for siblings to attend the same school; over- and under-utilization of schools; projected growth in the area and future school facilities; proximity of schools to where students live; and current and projected enrollment broken down by student groups identified in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The last time U46 — the state’s second-largest school district, with more than 41,00 students — made boundary changes was in 2004. That’s when it adjusted elementary and middle school attendance zones so pupils would attend the schools closest to their homes. In response, some Elgin parents filed a discrimination lawsuit against U46 — which is still pending — claiming it discriminated against minorities because of their race and that too few students were being identified and served by English language-learning programs.

The district so far has spent $8.4 million defending itself from the lawsuit, according to U46 budget figures.

However, Sanders said the “establishment of guidelines was not directly tied to the lawsuit.”

Instead, he said, the guidelines “establish the expectations of the board of education regarding the criteria that should be used to evaluate any boundary changes.”

In any case, Sanders said, the district likely is going to make these boundary changes to avoid an estimated $35 million cost if U46 were to construct all the needed additions to retain current boundaries.

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