Growing student population has Yorkville school district looking for extra classrooms

Across Yorkville you can find new housing construction. Issues arising from population growth have long concerned the school district with their limited-capacity buildings.

As far back as 1995, before the explosion of subdivisions and townhome complexes, citizens debated in a referendum how much they should increase their taxes to upgrade the school buildings to keep up with the growth.

Three decades later, the classrooms are out of space. The Yorkville School District 115 approved $3 million to construct pole barns outside three elementary schools to create extra classroom space for the children.

Each pole barn, which will not be attached to the main elementary school buildings, will contain bathrooms, and four classrooms, with each classroom holding between 25 to 30 students. There may be as many as 120 students taking classes in each pole barn building at a time.

The pole barn classrooms will be located outside Grande Reserve Elementary School, Autumn Creek Elementary School, and Bristol Bay Elementary School. Both Bristol Bay and Autumn Creek receive federal Title I funding because a significant portion of their student population meets low-income criteria.

The pole barn classrooms are scheduled to be ready for students by August 1, 2025.

The rapid residential growth in the community has increased enrollment within the district by 10.5% in each of the past four years, according to school district documents.

Because the growth is projected to continue into future years, the district is undergoing an ambitious master facilities plan this summer to completely renovate, upgrade, and rebuild school buildings throughout the district to accommodate future enrollment increases.

The pole barns were determined to be the most cost-effective solution to provide extra classroom space before new official buildings are constructed, said Heather DiVerde, executive director of facility operations.

“Our elementary schools are getting close to capacity, and with all the home construction going on in the district, we’re trying to be proactive by making sure we can accommodate students that move into the community,” DiVerde said. “We’re looking into this for the next three years, and we’re hoping once we get our master facility plan this July, we can foresee what we will need every year.”

The issue of classroom space has become so concerning to the district that Kreg Wesley, the assistant superintendent of business services, cautioned against a new townhome proposal at a city meeting because he said the influx of residents would just exacerbate the school district’s accommodation issues.

“The school district is having issues with capacity and this is just going to contribute to this,” Wesley said at a February Planning and Zoning meeting.

The school district master facilities plan, which includes a recently purchased 100-acre property near the high school, has involved district officials touring all the schools and collecting community feedback on what the construction should be engineered to accommodate, from more classroom space for band to a large athletics field house.

In the meantime, DiVerde said installing the pole barns outside the three elementary school is the only construction in the wings.

David Yodelis, director of facilities and operations, said the district will begin pouring concrete flooring and setting up utilities in anticipation for arrival of the building structures.

“One of the huge selling features for doing this process, rather than doing mobile classrooms or rental space, is at the end of the three years we get to keep the buildings,” Yodelis said. “We can do anything we want with them, from reconfiguring the inside to make recess areas, to using it for band, or even making additional storage.”

In addition to the three pole barns, the district’s plans for the 100-acre property will be provided this July when the master facilities plan is finalized.