D159 Wants Your Input on Closing MIS

wants your input on whether to start renting out part of MES. That's not a typo.

Although over the last year has been whether to sell, rent or rent out part of MIS, , the district's Building, Grounds and Transportation Committee spent Thursday night planning an upcoming forum also pitching the option of renting out part of MES, .

The planned meeting, which committee member Jennifer Fitzpatrick described as "an open forum," will be at 7 p.m. Jan. 19 in the Mokena Intermediate School gym.

Residents will get a chance to sound off on three options for conserving space and money: Close MIS, rent out part of MIS or rent out part of MES.

"There's much more open space at MES than MIS," Superintendent Steve Stein said. "This building (MIS) is really used at its capacity. Every room in this building is used on a daily basis. Maybe not all day, granted. But every room is used."

This compares to the elementary school, where there are six to eight rooms currently used as storage, Stein said. The materials in those rooms could easily be moved to , the bus barn or elsewhere in the district.

The question the board and the community must figure depends on two types of cost: the type that has a dollar amount attached to it and the type that doesn't.

Different Costs

The maintenance and utilities on MIS run to more than $138,000 a year. If they sell or rent the school, they'll save on some or all of that. (All if they find a buyer, some depending on the rental agreement they work out with a tenant.)

But if they close MIS, they will have to pay more than $86,000 more for buses a year (they currently use the same bus drivers for both since the schools run on different schedules).

Then there are the other costs, ones that don't have dollar figures attached.

How much is it worth to parents to have a school dedicated solely to pre-K through third-graders? How much is it worth to parents who have children at both schools getting all their kids home at the same time?

Renting out part of MES would, board member Pat Markham said, cause "the least amount of chaos." Moving all the kids to MES is fine now, but might cause a space crunch if the district .

The discussion Thursday was as large as the conceptual benefit of the MIS culture and as small as a disagreement with the lawyer and architect over whether the district would have to redo the sprinkler system.

The presentation on Jan. 19 will present all those costs and benefits to the public.

Who Would Rent?

School board President John Troy said the district has met with and Lincoln-Way Area Special Education District 843, which currently has many of its classes at the elementary school, about renting space.

Troy said it's too early to figure how much money that would bring the district. They don't even know which school they would be renting.

"It's a difficult number to get your hands on because we haven't entered those preliminary negotiations yet," he said. "My feeling is that the tenant would just be gravy."

Troy said that if the park district rents some of MES, some of MIS or all of MIS, the space would be used for childrens educational programs.

Whoever the final tenant at whichever school, they would be "schooling oriented," Stein said.