It took some compromise, a reversed vote and a roomful of concerned neighbors, but 65 teenagers with emotional and behavioral disabilities will have a place to go to school in Arlington Heights.
The Township High School District 214 board this week reversed an earlier decision and agreed to allow the high school students from the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization to use a portion of the Forest View Alternative School.
The decision also means that 65 special-education preschoolers at Kensington School in Arlington Heights won’t have to relocate to the Forest View site. The younger pupils would have been moved to make room for the high school students.
“There was no perfect solution,” said Robert Zimmanck, a District 214 board member and representative to the NSSEO board. “Forest View has a high school setting. Kensington is a small school for K-5 students and has a small gym and lunch room.”
Kensington-area residents have “graciously accepted” the younger pupils but were understandably concerned about the older ones, Zimmanck said.
“They have a partially valid concern,” Zimmanck said. “High school students can wander off and there are homes across from the Kensington School. You could have difficulties.”
John Carrato, an Arlington Heights resident who acted as spokesman for hundreds of those Kensington-area residents, said that the school district’s vote on Wednesday corrected a well-intentioned but hasty decision two weeks ago.
“We are very, very happy,” he said. “Now that they have all the facts, they have made an informed decision.”
The game of musical schools began when NSSEO, which owns Kensington School, faced a severe space crunch when Community Consolidated School District 21 voted in March to terminate NSSEO’s lease at London School in Wheeling at the end of 1994.
NSSEO had been using the school as their K-12 Behavior Education Center, for 235 students with behavioral problems, but District 21 decided it needed the space for its own students.
Space was found at Schecter Day School in Northbrook for NSSEO’s 170 elementary and middle school students, and NSSEO had planned to use a portion of District 214’s Forest View Alternative School for its 65 high school students.
But Forest View staff said they worried that adolescents from the two programs would clash, forcing faculty to spend an inordinate amount of time controlling the students instead of teaching.
“We would probably have to over-emphasize control issues and cut back on quality teaching time,” Forest View Director Bill Johnson said.
The board instead decided on June 16 to allow NSSEO to move its 65 Kensington preschool students to Forest View, freeing up space for NSSEO to move its high school students from the Behavior Education Center into Kensington.
Residents around Kensington immediately protested the decision, concerned that the Behavior Education Center high school students would conflict with students from nearby Prospect High School.
They also said that Kensington School, designed for preschool students with a small gym, no library and no cafeteria, is unsuitable for high school students.
“We have our hands full dealing with one set of high school students,” Carrato said. “We believe that it is totally inappropriate to place high school students in a school that was designed for little children.”
NSSEO officials and District 214 administrators don’t believe there will be any problems supervising the additional students.
“There will be specific supervision and staff for the (NSSEO) students,” Zimmanck said. “There won’t be a problem of control.”
NSSEO Executive Director Pamela Gillet said that Forest View has advantages over Kensington School for high school students because it is an existing high school environment.
After hearing from residents and questioning staff and NSSEO members, five of the seven District 214 board members voted to allow the Behavior Education Center high school students to move into Forest View.
Board member David Wiltse said he changed his vote because it was a more appropriate use for Forest View that displaces as few students as possible, not because of the lobbying efforts made by residents.
“I am not responding to pressure, I am responding to common sense,” Wiltse said.
Because the move will require an estimated $1.1 million in renovations to Forest View, Gillet said the move would be a permanent one for the Behavior Education Center’s high school students.
