Before John Asplund became superintendent of District 205 the Board of Education was presented with nine options for reconfiguring schools.Those different configurations varied with most involving some school closures with improvements for others.
Asplund says he wasn’t a fan of most of those options but the board is hiring an architect and he hopes they’ll have a few options in front of the board this summer.
He says a key part of discussions they’ll have over the course of this year will be whether to move Galesburg schools into attendance centers.
Attendance centers are where certain grade levels are all grouped at a building, for example all 4th graders attending Steele and all 5th graders attending Silas Willard.
Asplund says attendance centers do come with some drawbacks.
“If you have a kindergartner, a 3rd grader and a 5th grader they could be in three different buildings,” Asplund says. “But the advantage is you’re much more efficient, professional development for teachers is much easier, much more collaboration within grade level. It’s a lot more bang for your buck but there’s some more inconvenience for the parents and then there’s not that community feel for that school.”
He says that Steele, Silas Willard, and Lombard will definitely be in the picture going forward, since they’ve undergone extensive renovations in recent years.
Galesburg High School is also unlikely to go anywhere, although the structure built in 1958 is in need of many improvements.
Asplund says in the series of community meetings that were held last fall as he was getting acclimated to the position, a lot of residents expressed their desire to see district facility improvements.
He says he hopes to have a plan decided on by November.
