After two years of planning and collecting input from the community, Northbrook School District 28 is eyeing $94.9 million in bonds to replace one school and renovate its three others.
District 28 would use the potential bond revenue and $20 million in existing funds to cover the costs of rebuilding Meadowbrook School and overhauling Northbrook Junior High, Greenbriar School and Westmoor School, said Terry Ryan, spokeswoman for the district.
After the initial bonds are paid off, the district would borrow enough to rebuild the other three schools without increasing debt payments, under a proposal favored by parents and community members who shared their preferences with the community-led Facilitating Team for the project, Ryan said.
“The team helped narrow what we will present in the next steps, helping in our messaging and interpreting feedback from the community,” she said. “We’re going to continue to gather feedback through November.”
As part of that process, District 28 will conduct an online survey from Nov. 11-25 and has invited community members to tour its schools to see firsthand the needs identified by the team.
The tours were scheduled for Nov. 13 at Westmoor, Nov. 14 at Northbrook Junior High, Greenbriar on Nov. 20 and Meadowbrook on Nov. 21. Each tour will last from 6-6:30 p.m.
“We understand that not everybody can make the tours, but for those who have the time, it’s definitely worth it to see firsthand,” Ryan said. “We’re going to do our best to capture the stopping points on each tour and post them on our website, and add some additional narration as we go.”
The Facilitating Team will meet one more time in December to review all community feedback before making a recommendation to the Board of Education at a special meeting on Dec. 18.
The 15-member team met with about 60 community members and parents on Oct. 14 and another 45 on Oct. 28, Ryan said.
The residents who attended those meetings favored a proposal to first replace Meadowbrook and fund renovations and additions to the other schools, said Gauri Brown, a team leader, who has one child attending the junior high and two attending Greenbriar.
“The intention over time is to have a plan to replace all of the schools over a period of time,” Brown said.
That plan also includes District 28 investing capital in the project, in addition to bond revenue, said Tamara Reese, another team leader, who has two children at Greenbriar, one at the junior high and another at Glenbrook North High School, which is not part of District 28.
“The community felt strongly that the district should have skin in the game,” Reese said. “The question is how much should it put in. The community does not want the expense to affect school programming.”
Reese and Brown said at first the community was not aware of the age and condition of the district’s schools.
“The district has done a really good job in the education piece with talking about where we’re at and what the district has done to maintain schools this long,” she said. “Nobody was interested in maintaining the status quo. We received a lot of input about what should be done.”
District 28’s four schools are between 58 and 75 years old, Ryan said. The district completed a facilities master plan last winter that identified nearly $80 million in needed improvements related to accessibility, safety and security, maintenance, and “updates that support how students learn and what they need to be prepared for high school,” she said.
The master plan may be viewed here: https://www.northbrook28.net/about-us/bttd28/facilities-master-plan
If a referendum for the bond issue is recommended, the board must approve it in January in order to get the question on the ballot in time for the April 2025 election, Ryan said. If voters were to approve the proposed bond issue, the necessary work, including rebuilding Meadowbrook, could be completed in three to five years, she said.
If the board chooses this option and bonds are issued, it would cost the owner of a $500,000 home about $685 a year, Ryan said.
The bonds would be paid off in 10 years, allowing District 28 to borrow additional money to replace the remaining three schools in the following years without increasing debt payments, she said.
“It’s essentially the same tax burden we would already have agreed to, but not increasing taxes,” Reese said. “We would not be going back in three to five years and asking for more money.”
