Parents upset with proposed Dist. 203 boundary changes

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Hundreds of residents from the Highlands School neighborhood turned out for a citizen meeting concerning proposed boundary changes in School District 203. | Submitted

Updated: February 19, 2012 8:16AM

Not happy with preliminary proposals to change boundaries for Naperville District 203 schools, parents of children who attend Highlands Elementary School are letting their feelings be known.

“We want them to slow down and not commit to changes next year,” Jennifer Conway said.

The proposed maps released by the district Friday offer three scenarios, two of which call for the transfer of 176 Highlands students to Maplebrook or Meadow Glen.

The third map calls for 147 Highlands students to transfer.

While Mill Street and Beebe schools will also see significant numbers of students transfer, the Highlands parents feel the transfer of students out of their school is unnecessary, and have stressed to the Sun that Highlands doesn’t face the same overcrowding problems as the other two schools.

Several hundred of those parents gathered at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lisle Monday night to organize opposition. They have promised to picket the Jan. 18 meeting of the district’s Enrollment Capacity Study Committee at Washington Junior High School in Naperville. At the meeting, the committee will review revised draft maps. Community members may observe the discussion.

The Highlands parents have stressed the district’s professed commitment to disrupt neighborhoods as little as possible.

“They’ve divided Huntington Estates in half,” Maria Mulhair said. “They violated their first rule (of keeping neighborhoods intact).”

Conway agreed, saying, “We are a single community ... we’re not two communities.”

Not in dispute is the need to relieve overcrowding at Beebe and Mill Street elementary schools, the parents said.

“There is an immediate need and we have to address it,” Mulhair said. “We all agree with that.”

Several parents noted that the proposed changes would have their children attend Maplebrook or Meadow Glen elementary and Lincoln Junior High, effectively breaking up the neighborhoods and taking students away from longtime classmates and teachers.

“Now you’re taking students who are close to Kennedy (Junior High) and sending them to Lincoln,” Mulhair said.

Conway said that her children would be forced to cross 75th Street and be subjected to safety hazards from higher traffic.

“Other schools are closer to us ... with much safer routes,” she said.

In another development, an online petition was created calling for the removal of Superintendent Mark Mitrovich over the boundary change issues. About 125 people had signed the petition as of Tuesday afternoon.

Contacted for this story, the district funneled all response through Director of Communications Susan Rice, who responded by email. Regarding the petition to oust Mitrovich, Rice wouldn’t directly comment, only saying that any individual has the right to circulate petitions.

She denied that the proposed boundary moves have anything to do with balancing out the district’s test scores.

“The Enrollment Capacity Study Committee has never considered test scores at any point in this process,” she wrote.

Academic issues aside, some parents worry about home values.

Paul and Justine Schneider are Highlands parents who, after being caught in a switch where their old home got redistricted into Indian Prairie School District 204, bought their current house for the specific purpose of knowing their children would go to Highlands, then Kennedy Junior High, and finish at Naperville North.

“If you were moving for the schools, that’s where you want to go,” Paul said, stressing that the family thought the neighborhood, being mature, would protect them from any boundary changes.

Others, like Jason Moede, who began the online petition to oust the superintendent, were troubled as much by the district’s approach as by the proposed changes.

“The problem is really the way the whole process has happened,” he said. “It hasn’t been transparent ... they lost an opportunity to pull the community together. Instead, it’s been really divisive.”