The Jacksonville School District 117 board of education continued with a brief discussion about southern boundary change for the district on Wednesday night.
The district had taken up a discussion with members from the Woodson community who would be affected if the southern boundary of the Murrayville-Woodson Elementary district moved north.
Superintendent Steve Ptacek recommended after another analysis of the student populations at South Eisenhower and Murrayville-Woodson that younger siblings should remain in the same school as their older siblings. The recommendations would require no families to move currently enrolled children under the proposal.
Ptacek says the boundary changes will see no short-term effects but will provide long-term growth opportunities. He says current families have been contacted by building principals about the proposal: “The principals at Eisenhower and South met or spoke with the parents that would be affected by the change and asked them if they would be interested in staying at their schools if they provided their own transportation. And pretty much predominantly all of the parents said that would be their desire. So I brought the recommendation to allow them to do that and so that they don’t have to have two kids going to different schools, that if they do have a current student or a child that has not yet reached the age to come to kindergarten and they would be in the school with an older sibling to allow them to stay at that school also. Then we will compile a list, you’re talking about maybe 25-26 students total, and we will know that and they will have the waivers to be able to stay at their current existing schools provided that they provide their own transportation because we just can’t run another bus route. We don’t have the manpower to make separate bus routes for that. Ultimately, this is a long range project, this boundary change. The impact immediately would not be that large on Murrayville-Woodson or on South or Eisenhower, but we do hope with a new school, [it will] promote growth and that’s the reason the boundary change is being made. There’s really no reason at this point in time if they’ll provide their own transportation to inconvenience these families.”
The next regular business meeting for the board is scheduled for November 18th. Ptacek says the board is expected to formally adopt the proposal at that meeting.
Vision 117 representative Bob Roads says the new Murrayville-Woodson building is now enclosed, most roofing and exterior work is complete, and paving is expected to begin in early November. The contractor anticipates finishing the project in April 2027.
Superintendent Steve Ptacek says he’s pretty confident in Roads’ timeline: “We’re ahead of schedule. There’s nothing on back order that we’re worried about coming in. The building envelope’s near completed and once that is completed, weather won’t even be an issue whatsoever. I don’t want to get overly excited because really our end product goal was June 1, 2027. So if it’s in April, we’ll be ecstatic because we then are going to be able to have a lengthy amount of time to do a transition from the one building into the new building.”
The project remains considerably below its original bid, including an approved change order of nearly $867,000 after water supply testing determined a separate fire storage tank and pump house were unnecessary.
Ptacek says it could give the district the ability to perform another sizable building maintenance project elsewhere: “We always build in about 10% contingencies into the project. And with the new construction, we’ve not seen that level of contingencies. So when you add that all up, we’re hoping at a minimal to have $500,000 extra at the end of the project, potentially much more than that. We’ve got to wait till everything else comes in, and given the fact of we might make some changes along the way to add in some other items into the school, but it will definitely come under what we budgeted; and it does look like we’ll be able to do another project once this is all done. We’re not talking about a new school or anything. We’re talking about like a half a million dollar project. It looks very promising that that will be able to happen.”
Ptacek would not commit to a particular project at this time, saying he wants to wait on the completion of the Murrayville-Woodson school. He says there is a list of projects that the board would consider with any of the remaining overage from the bond money.
Ptacek also wanted to emphasize again that the new school’s construction was being built with bonds that were issued through the 1% sales tax revenue and not by raising additional property taxes.