Elementary School District 54 Thursday night approved a plan that will allow the district to accommodate more students without hiring more teachers.
The school board, voting 4-3, redrew school boundaries to move the 32 students anticipated from two new developments in Hoffman Estates to either Dirksen Elementary School in Schaumburg or Nerge in Roselle.
The developments are south of Higgins Road, west of Plum Grove Road. Although families are moving into the developments, no students have registered with District 54.
Under the previous boundaries, students from these developments would have attended Fairview Elementary School in Hoffman Estates.
The alternative, which would have transferred 127 students now attending Fairview to other schools, met with strong opposition.
The district will decide in the next week which schools the students from the two developments will attend.
The boundary changes came about as the result of an effort to maintain teacher-pupil ratios without adding staff. School officials estimate that next year each school will average fewer than 24 students per class.
While the district’s enrollment of more than 16,000 has declined slightly this year, Fairview has seen a slight increase, school officials said.
Under the original proposal, presented to the public two weeks ago, 50 pupils would have been moved from Fairview to Dirksen or Nerge. In addition, 77 pupils would have been moved from Muir Elementary School in Hoffman Estates to Blackwell Elementary School in Schaumburg.
