Voters in Tuesday’s general election appear to have approved the Indian Prairie School District’s proposal to sell up to $420 million in bonds to pay for what district officials have said are needed facility improvements.
With all precincts in the district reporting, unofficial results from Tuesday night showed that 75.86% of voters in the DuPage County portion of Indian Prairie School District 204 and 70.62% of voters in the Will County portion of the district voted in favor of the proposal.
Funds from the bond issue would go to pay for improvements to school safety, deferred maintenance projects and making operations more efficient, among other things, with projects that would touch all 33 of the district’s schools, according to past reporting. Even without the bonds, the district would have still needed to pay for some of these projects, which would have been paid for in part by cutting the equivalent of 50 full-time positions, district officials previously said.
The bonds would be paid for using a continuation of an existing 37-cent property tax per $100 of equalized assessed value that would otherwise expire at the end of 2026, meaning that voters’ apparent approval of the bonds would effectively keep the tax rate flat, past reporting shows.
Funding safety and security improvements would be the district’s highest priority when using bond funds, officials previously said. With bond funds, the district plans to do $40 million worth of construction projects in summer 2025, of which $10 million is set to go toward safety and security upgrades like building secure school entrances and upgrading external doors.
Other than safety and security upgrades, which are expected to be completed by the end of summer 2026, the bonds would also go to fund a variety of other school-related construction and maintenance projects, with some schools receiving total overhauls and others receiving relatively more minor work, according to past reporting.
Waubonsie Valley High School and Gregory and Hill middle schools are expected to get “comprehensive improvements,” which means total renovations and a slew of other work, a voter information sheet posted to the district’s website stated.
The district would not receive the $420 million right away. District staff have previously said that the first round of bonds would likely be sold before the end of the year, with plans to do additional rounds of sales in 2025, 2027 and 2029.
None of the funds that come from the sale of bonds can go toward day-to-day operational costs, like salaries or programs.
However, since many of the projects that would be funded by the bonds would increase efficiency and lower recurring costs, funds would be freed up that could go toward hiring additional teachers and reducing class sizes, district officials have previously said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
