It took much more than bricks and mortar to construct Clarendon Hills Middle School.
Before the work could begin, Elementary School District 181, which serves Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills and Burr Ridge, had to contend with two failed referendums, a lawsuit from homeowners and skirmishes with the Clarendon Hills Park District. It took almost three years from the time the $12.8 million bond issue passed until the school opened its doors for the first day of the new school year on Aug. 28.
“Two years ago, it seemed like it might never happen,” said Joyce Macal, assistant principal at Hinsdale Middle School, up to now the district’s only middle school.
An agreement reached in summer 1999 between the school board and the Park District allowed work to begin on the school. Mild weather over the past year helped the project finish by its August target date.
So this fall, the approximately 1,200 pupils in 6th through 8th grades no longer are crammed into one building and 16 mobile units at Hinsdale. New attendance boundaries have divided the pupils between the two schools, with about 630 at Clarendon Hills and about 580 at Hinsdale.
“It’s a beautiful school,” Supt. Mary Curley said. “It’s wonderful from a traffic-flow pattern standpoint, from an aesthetic standpoint and for its functionality. The science labs are overwhelming–there are more stations so there’ll be more participation–and the hallways aren’t going to be so crowded anymore.
“This is really a great opportunity to have both sites establish new identities. We’re not just celebrating the opening of this school, we’re celebrating both schools.”
Administrators didn’t want the pupils attending Hinsdale to feel left out of the excitement, so there were opening-day kickoffs at both sites. Hinsdale is getting its own facelift, including an applied-technology lab. And pupils will continue to see each other through joint activities, including dances and the 8th-gradespring trip to Washington.
Administrators want the pupils to have comparable academic experiences, so the scheduling, curriculum and special-education services will be the same at both schools.
“We want students to get similar experiences in both buildings,” said Walter Kistenfeger, the principal at Clarendon Hills. He was the principal at Hinsdale for the last seven years.
“So one of the challenges for this year will be that we are articulating well and the curriculum is staying the same for both schools.”
The red-brick, three-story school at 301 Chicago Ave. was designed by architects STR Partners Ltd. of Chicago, with help from an exterior design committee composed of community members.
“We wanted it to look like it fit into the community and we thought it needed to look like an older school,” said Terry Pocius of Clarendon Hills, a committee member whose 5-year-old daughter has about a six-year wait before she’ll be attending the school.
“We wanted more windows and we wanted a friendly entrance. They gave us everything we wanted.”
The school has 86,000 square feet, a little less than Hinsdale. There are 24 classrooms, six science labs, two computer labs, a learning center, gym and a “cafetorium” (cafeteria with a stage). One computer lab is an applied-technology lab with 15 stations, where pupils can learn about such topics as robotics and flight simulation.
The push for a new middle school started about four years ago with two failed referendum proposals. The proposals called for tearing down Hinsdale Middle School and replacing it with one large middle school, a concept voters didn’t support. A referendum proposal to build a smaller second middle school passed in November 1997.
Other problems followed, however.
The school district owned land in Prospect Park in Clarendon Hills, but it wasn’t in the best spot for a school. So the district worked out a land swap in the park with the Park District.
Neighbors of the park worried about traffic congestion and an increase in flooding problems. They filed a suit to stop construction early in 1999, but a judge dismissed it.
In part because of the disagreement about what to do with storm water runoff, work on the school was at a standstill when Curley became superintendent in July 1999. She canceled a family vacation to bring the sides together to talk.
“I called a Sunday night meeting with the Park District and the village,” she said. “I knew time was most critical. In order to be up and running in August of 2000, the building had to start going up by the end of the summer [of 1999]. We were able to resolve issues and put differences behind us and do what was in the best interests of the kids.”
A 15-member committee of parents and administrators held five meetings before reaching an agreement on attendance boundaries for the schools. Pupils from Elm, Oak and Madison Schools will attend Hinsdale; pupils from the Lane, Monroe, Prospect and Walker schools will attend Clarendon Hills. (Exceptions to these general guidelines are based on written requests from parents, Curley said, adding that few requests have been received and she hoped it stayed that way.)
The district originally hoped that by splitting its middle-school staff in half, it wouldn’t have to hire many staff members. The 69 full-time teachers at Hinsdale filled out request forms with their preferences for school, grade level and the subjects they’d like to teach. Most requests were honored.
By last spring, however, administrators were rethinking how many new staff members would be needed.
For example, they originally thought the schools might share a guidance counselor. But they consider this a base-line program and have hired a second guidance counselor. The district also decided to hire a reading teacher instead of having the schools share one.
“So we’re going to hire more people than we originally thought,” Curley said.What the district does have now, though, is plenty of space.
“The Hinsdale Middle School building presented us with a lot of challenges,” Kistenfeger said. “Now we’re getting back into a situation where space is more available.”
He’s also excited that the teachers will be able to re-examine the tenets of a middle-school education–such as giving pupils exploratory opportunities and teaching them strategies for a healthy lifestyle, using team-teaching and having an advisory program.
CLARENDON HILLS MIDDLE SCHOOL
Address: 301 Chicago Ave.
Opening date: Aug. 28, 2000.
Principal: Walter Kistenfeger.
Enrollment: approximately 630 pupils in 6th through 8th grade.
Facilities: 86,000 square feet, including a 15-station applied-technology lab, a computer lab, a cafetorium (lunchroom that converts to an auditorium with a stage) and two science labs on each of the three floors.
