District 112 Board Votes To Close 2 Highland Park Schools

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — The North Shore District 112 Board of Education voted Tuesday to close Elm Place Middle School and Lincoln Elementary School, adopt a full-day kindergarten, consolidate dual language programs and adopted a plan to close its Green Bay Road building and relate administrative offices and the district's early childhood programs. The board also asked district administrators to redraw the attendance boundaries of remaining schools to reduce inequities in class sizes, lower costs and minimize disruption to students.

The district will save millions of dollars in operating costs for the two schools, which are now set to close at the end of the 2017-18 school year. New attendance boundaries would take effect for the 2018-19 school year. The district's Green Bay Road location would close after the 2018-19.

Several members of the board suggested they had hoped to have a reconfiguration plan ready to present to voters next March. Reorganization of District 112 has been the subject of years of discussion among citizen groups and a rejected referendum last year. Since then, the Reconfiguration 2.0 Community Team was formed and offered up several school consolidation proposals. Unlike some of Reconfiguration 2.0's other proposals, the measures adopted Oct. 3 do not require a referendum. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news for Highland Park — or your Illinois community. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Board member Bennet Lasko said quality of education should always be the district's guiding principle. He said the kind of decisions made by the board are the tough decisions every member of the board has known they would have to face.

"They're controversial, they're difficult," he said. "It's impossible to make everybody happy, but they're very important, and I think that all the decisions that are before us tonight are steps along the way to improving the quality of education in very significant and measurable ways that we are going to see in the next couple of years here."

» Video: Watch the Board of Education's Oct. 3 discussion of school consolidations.

Only one board member, Yumi Ross, voted against consolidating the district's dual language programs. She noted that the board has zero personal experience of the district's famous dual language program, which offers classes comprised of a mix of English and Spanish language learners.

"I cannot in good conscience support consolidating our dual language program so that these students are in their own schools separate from the general student population," she said. "Even with a 50-50 split of native and non-native speakers."

Ahead of the board's vote, members of the first dual language class to complete the program's full 13 years through Districts 112 and 113 published a statement opposing the proposal to consolidate dual language and English-only programs.

Ross said she has enormous respect for the district's co-interim superintendents, but criticized the lack of feedback from native Spanish language speakers.

"To make these decisions," she said "Without any reasonable feedback at all, winds up – however unintentionally – sounding, looking and feeling patronizing."

Lincoln has been open since 1909, Elm Place since 1924, according to the Highland Park News. The district has not adjusted attendance boundaries or closed any of its schools since three districts – 107, 108 and 111 – merged in 1993 to form North Shore School District 112. A spokesperson for the district told Daily North Shore the board has yet to decide what to do with school's buildings after they are shuttered.

» Read more from Daily North Shore, Highland Park News. Former Dual Language Students