DeKalb studies solutions to school overcrowding

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DeKALB - Seventeen months since the last of three consecutive failed referendums, the DeKalb School District has a different board president, a new superintendent and - by the start of classes next week - some $6 million worth of new or improved educational space. What it doesn't have yet, however, is a long-term plan to deal with what board President Tom Teresinski calls "deficit capacity," or the space it now lacks to accommodate the students expected to reside in approved, but not yet built, housing developments. That solution is likely to come in the form of another multimillion-dollar building referendum, although school officials are so far reluctant to say that definitively. "It (a referendum) won't be ready for November, that's for sure," Teresinski said. "I don't want to prejudge what the committee's going to do." The committee he refers to, Teresinski and Schools Superinten-dent Paul Beilfuss agree, is likely to be a group of residents and school officials who will take a detailed look at information about expected enrollment growth and building capacity and try to come up with a plan to deal with the gap between the two. The district took a similar approach in 2002, when a 36-member cross section of the community came up with a $39.8 million referendum proposal that - while more than $15 million less than one on the ballot eight months before - failed nonetheless. 3,000 homes on drawing board Using information from the 2003 DeKalb "growth summit," and taking into account recently approved subdivisions, the district figures that among the three communities it serves - DeKalb, Cortland and Malta - there are more than 3,000 housing units on the drawing board, Teresinski said. He said estimates are that those 3,000 units could have more than 2,000 school-age children living in them, about half at the elementary level. Even with improvements and additions to four district schools and a grade-reconfiguration plan that put fifth-graders back at the elementary level, the district estimates that it will still need space for about 1,200-1,500 students districtwide just to accommodate the proposed housing. Assuming the district can push through a successful building plan to deal with that deficit, it hopes to address the ongoing need for space with impact fees and other contributions from housing developers that they can get inserted in the preannexation agreements developers sign with cities. It also may be able to roll over some existing debt and possibly tap future state grant money. Few rules for passing referendums The school board and Beilfuss have set a workshop for some time next month to talk about the roles and responsibilities of each and the long-term plans for the district. If those plans include a building referendum on the ballot next year, the people promoting it might benefit from some of the lessons Beilfuss learned as the superintendent of the Wayzata (Minn.) School Dis-trict, which was able to pass four straight referendums over 10 years while he was there and had not had a referendum turned down in 10 straight tries. "(You) have to have stakeholders invested in it," Beilfuss said about the importance of involving residents, especially those with influence in the community, in the creation and promotion of a ballot measure. "The involvement of the community has always been a big issue," Teresinski said. "I think that part was good." He felt that DeKalb's past three referendums weren't promoted enough, however. Campaigns for successful referendums typically need to last "a minimum of 18 to 24 months," according to Ron Everett, the executive director of the DeKalb-based Illinois Association of School Business Officials and a former superintendent in Utah. That time frame can include time spent promoting what turn out to be unsuccessful referendums, because the effort at least keeps the needs of the district on the minds of the public. On the other hand, he said, if voters see little change in successive referendum proposals, they may feel as if they are repeatedly being asked to OK something they have already made clear they don't want. Everett, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not necessarily on behalf of IASBO, said there are few general truths that districts can look to for getting a referendum passed. "That's the magic question," he said. "It's such an individualized thing. Every district is unique." However, according to Everett, what seems generally true is that any referendum that doesn't have the unanimous support of the school board is doomed to fail. The district also has to have an established public relations or communications infrastructure in place in order to be able to get its message to the public. DeKalb School Board member James Mitchell - the only person elected to the board in April of last year who had been opposed to the district's referendum that appeared on the same ballot - also emphasized the need for "more and better communication between the board and the public." Chris Rickert can be reached at crickert@pulitzer. net.