Board member Larry Snow was rather polite at making his points at last Thursday night’s District 158 board meeting.

The topic was high school student capacity and cost alternatives.

Snow pointed out that the justification for spending a minimum of 13.8 million dollars was the assumption:

15% of the high school classrooms have to be kept empty throughout the entire school day. (Click to enlarge the page.)

When I went to high school the scheduling was good enough that there was rarely an empty classroom.

What about when you were in high school?

Snow explained that, if scheduling was done so that only 10% of the classrooms were empty, then the capacity for the current high school would increase from 2,856 to 3,194 students.

Snow’s point was that this is well within the range of capacity needed for 10 years or more.

The highest need capacity shown in the administration report is for 3,039 students in 2016-2017. The following year less capacity is needed.

Snow didn’t have to come up with these numbers. The District presented these numbers to the Village of Huntley joint meeting on January 29th. They are online (page 37 of 48) at this link. (See above.)

Another assumption in calculating capacity is having 7 classes per day at the high school.

Wouldn’t you think administrators would use current facts and point out how for this year there are currently 8 class periods per day? But this might increase “capacity“ calculations.

What was not written down in the administration’s report to the Board were a couple of interesting enrollment facts.

Since the end of September there are now 46 (2.3%) fewer students at Huntley High School.

The report sent to the Board for the February 5th meeting had high school enrollment at 1,933 students.

What is interesting is as of January 31st, the actual high school enrollment was 1,901 or 31 fewer students. The administration decided to use a higher number for the report and not update the report for the Board with the lower total.

In case you think this was entirely the result of 12th graders graduating in mid-year, you might want to consider that there are 19 fewer students in Huntley High’s 11th grade now than at then end of September.

One presumption, and a very large one, is that if you have a class size of, say, 632 students in 7thth grade that the class size two years later for 9th grade will be at least 632 students.

But what the District 158 administration omitted to point out to the Board was how one anomaly is currently happening.

In 2007 (end of January), there were 479 9th graders at Huntley High. Two years later you might expect at least as many 11th graders.

Interesting enough there are 34 fewer students (435) two years later in the 11th grade.

Is there a high school capacity need for 2013-2014 in Huntley?

Probably not.

District 158 is planning to conduct a citizen survey about the need for a new high school.

Left out is the possibility that respondents might not find any of the answers acceptable.

No “None of the above.”

Board member Mike Skala and the board majority decided that residents must select from a list of four “spend millions of dollars” options in a survey to be sent out to residents.

Snow’s suggestion that residents may feel no additional capacity is needed for the foreseeable future and “None of the above” is applicable, was rejected by Skala and the board majority.

Unfortunately for Snow, Skala has the support of the teachers union, who wants Snow out of the way come time to vote on the results of the current Teachers Compensation Committee proposal.

The teachers want guaranteed six percent per year raises in the four years before they retire.

Those are the years’ salaries upon which their pensions are based.