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During this time, some areas within our community have experienced greater enrollment decline than others. As a result, notable disparities exist among many of our schools in regards to their operating enrollment compared to maximum capacity. This leads to some schools having a greater percentage of unoccupied classrooms, lower class sizes and greater access to specialists like speech pathologists and reading specialists than others. This inherently creates educational inequities, which run counter to our mission of maximizing the academic, social and emotional potential of each student and our Strategic Plan priority of student success.
Every five years, CCSD93 commissions a professional demographer to forecast enrollment and demographic trends for the next half-decade to help our district keep an eye toward the future. The most recently completed report performed by John D. Kasarda, Ph.D., whose projections we have found consistently reliable, suggests that CCSD93’s enrollment will likely remain relatively steady or dip slightly throughout the next five years. This means the aforementioned disparities are not likely to improve.
With this in mind, the Board of Education has authorized CCSD93 to create a Superintendent’s Boundary Committee to analyze data related to enrollment and school boundaries with the ultimate goal of ensuring that we are most equitably serving the students and families of our community. Working collaboratively with school administrators and PTAs, we are in the process of securing parent committee members from each CCSD93 elementary and middle school and will also have representation from the Board of Education and our educators. The committee’s work could result in a recommendation to the Board of Education for updates to CCSD93’s boundaries starting in future school years.
I will keep you apprised of the committee’s progress. It will meet numerous times between now and the winter months, and no recommendations will be made to the Board of Education until after the committee’s work is complete. If from the committee’s work it becomes clear that updates to our boundaries will be recommended, I will then share with you a schedule that includes informational session dates that community and staff members will be invited to attend and the potential timeline of implementation.
We understand the far ranging impact that any changes to school boundaries can have for our community, and we will not take the forthcoming conversations and analysis related to them lightly.
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