HB2012ham001 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Rep. Cynthia Soto

Filed: 2/21/2006

09400HB2012ham001 LRB094 02841 RAS 55944 a

AMENDMENT TO HOUSE BILL 2012

AMENDMENT NO. ______. Amend House Bill 2012 by replacing everything after the enacting clause with the following:

"Section 5. The School Code is amended by adding Section 2-3.142 as follows:

(105 ILCS 5/2-3.142 new)

Sec. 2-3.142. Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan.

(a) The State Board of Education shall assist school boards in planning and constructing new facilities, additions, and major renovations that will enable this State's public school system to provide equal educational opportunities for all children. The school board of each school district in this State shall prepare and submit a 5-year and a 10-year Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan (CEFP) to the State Board on or before January 1, 2008. The State Board shall develop detailed guidelines and a handbook to assist school districts in carrying out the comprehensive planning required by this Section. The State Board may adopt any rules necessary to implement and administer this Section.

(b) In developing a 5-year and 10-year CEFP, a school board must do all of the following:

(1) Establish a CEFP planning team and committees representative of citizens and staff from the school district.

(2) Develop district-wide goals and objectives and evaluate any previous 5-year plan.

(3) Research and compile data described in this Section.

(4) Translate educational needs into facility needs.

(5) Develop a finance plan to implement the facility improvements.

(6) Conduct public hearings and develop a synopsis of public comments.

(7) Develop an objective methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the plan. This evaluation is to occur during the third year of the 5-year planning period.

(8) Approve the proposed CEFP.

(9) Submit the CEFP to the State Board for approval. If the plan is altered prior to the 10-year anniversary date, the amended document must be submitted to the State Board for approval.

(c) The CEFP must include the following components:

(1) Goals and objectives.

(2) Community analysis.

(3) Population and enrollment study.

(4) Educational plan.

(5) Evaluation and inventory of existing facilities for compliance with State requirements.

(6) Major improvement plan for existing facilities.

(7) Inter-agency, shared-use of facilities feasibility study.

(8) Translating educational needs into facility needs.

(9) Financing plan, including a prioritized list of all projects within the school district and their estimated costs.

(10) Synopsis of comments from the public hearing.

(11) Evaluation and objective of implementation.

(d) The school board must develop and adopt the goals and objectives of the CEFP. These goals and objectives must consider all aspects of the educational and facility needs of the school district. Minimally, curriculum delivery models, grade configurations, maximum and minimum school sizes, community expectations, optimal student populations, and the number of facilities that can be effectively maintained, given limited resources available to the district, must be addressed.

(e) With respect to the community analysis component of the CEFP, the school board must study the following aspects of the school district's development:

(1) Population characteristics and density patterns.

(2) Population changes due to migration patterns and to fluctuations in the birth rate.

(3) Changes in land usage (residential, commercial, and industrial).

(4) Major highways and street networks and their probable future development.

(5) Changes in socio-economic patterns resulting in population shifts within the community.

(6) Condition and value of property assessments.

(7) Availability of community services, such as libraries, recreational areas, health services, and public assembly space.

(8) Employment opportunities.

(9) Parental expectations of the school system.

(10) Citizen attitudes and aspirations in general.

(11) Possible shifts in housing patterns.

(12) Study of school attendance zones as they relate to the dispersion of the district's school population.

(f) With respect to the population and enrollment study component of the CEFP, in making enrollment projections, the school board must consider the following statistics:

(1) Population trends for the school district and each school in the district.

(2) Birth rates and the number of births.

(3) School enrollment figures and trends for the past 10 years.

(4) Historic non-public school enrollment figures, if available.

(5) Trends of dropout and attrition rates for the past 10 years.

(6) Ten-year enrollment projections per school calculated by an approved method that considers items (1) through (5) of this subsection (f).

(g) With respect to the educational plan component of the CEFP, the school board shall include an analysis of the current educational program and projections of the planned educational program. The educational plan shall include the following:

(1) A description of the educational system proposed for the 5-year and 10-year CEFP and how it will improve instructional delivery as follows:

(A) How does the existing plan not meet the district's goals and objectives and how does the new plan meet these goals and objectives?

(B) Will the school system be predominately organized on a grade K through 4, 5 through 8, and 9 through 12 pattern or some other pattern?

(C) Will the typical pattern of one teacher per class be followed or are teaching teams to be involved all or part of the time?

(D) Generally, will there be self-contained or departmentalized classroom instruction?

(E) Generally, will there be typical grade patterns or will there be an ungraded or flexible grouping of students?

(F) What will be the maximum or minimum enrollment and total number of instructional areas in each school building?

(G) What method of scheduling will be utilized in each school building (traditional, block, flexible, year-round, or other)? Indicate the number of periods in each instructional day.

(H) What is the plan for providing vocational and technical education?

(2) A curriculum plan as follows:

(A) What knowledge, understanding, attitudes, skills, and habits of life should be developed through the experiences provided for children?

(B) What are the general characteristics of a high quality school program?

(h) The evaluation and inventory of existing facilities component of the CEFP shall include a survey of each school facility, including modular and detached structures in the school district (including diagrammatic floor plans and exterior photographs), using a school facility evaluation instrument. This evaluation shall provide objective data on the condition and components of the existing building, its appropriateness for delivery of the instructional program, and its ability to support the present and projected enrollments in an effective and efficient manner. Based on the district's goals and objectives, individual facility deficiencies must be identified. The school board must use the services of a certified recognized educational facility professional, architect, or professional engineer for the evaluation.

(i) The disposition of abandoned or surplus school buildings must be identified in the CEFP and must include accommodation for security, sanitation, health, and safety to minimize the facility as an attractive nuisance to the community and an analysis of feasible, alternative, adaptive uses by the surrounding community. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design principles must be included during the evaluation.

Facility improvements and new facilities must accommodate the educational programs by design. The building design must be dictated by the curriculum, as defined in an approved educational specification. Existing and new facilities must meet all regulations of this State.

The CEFP shall provide specific criteria the school district shall use to determine whether a school facility is to be closed, including a detailed analysis of the impact of the school closing on students to be transferred, the impact on receiving schools, the limit on the number of forced student transfers at the primary, middle school, and secondary school levels, and a study of potential alternatives to school closure. There must be substantive community input into the school closings and the alternatives analysis.

The CEFP must describe each school facility and site, enrollments, general conditions, recommendations for future use of the building, and cost estimates to implement the recommendations. The CEFP shall provide a list of projects at each facility needed to address the inadequacies in health and safety, building integrity, or educational capability of the facility. The CEFP shall have a one-year, 5-year, and 10-year timeline to indicate the anticipated completion of each of these projects.

(j) Prior to submitting the CEFP to the State Board of Education for approval, a minimum of one public hearing must be advertised and conducted in the school district, except that in a school district organized under Article 34 of this Code, a minimum of 3 public hearings must be advertised and conducted in the school district, to provide broad-based community input into the plan. As an addendum to the CEFP, sufficient documentation, including verification of public notices from the local newspaper, a synopsis of all comments received during the hearing, and a formal comment from the school board must be included.

(k) As part of the total CEFP, the school district shall include the objective means to be utilized in evaluating implementation and effectiveness of the overall plan and each project included in the plan. The evaluation shall measure all of the following:

(1) How each project furthers each of the quality educational goals of the school district and the State Board of Education, including student health and safety, economies of scale, travel time and other demographics, achievements of an effective and efficient instructional delivery system, curricular improvements, innovations in education, and adequate space for projected student enrollment and community use of educational facilities.

(2) Prioritization of projects within the district, to serve as a basis for determining expenditure of available funds.

(3) The overall success of a project and how it relates to the facilities plan of the district and the overall educational goals of the district and this State.

(l) The CEFP must be based on an assessment and statement of educational specifications for each of the facilities in the school district. The educational specifications must describe the educational activities that a proposed facility must support and the types of spaces that will best accommodate program requirements.

The development of educational specifications for each new school facility and for each substantially rehabilitated or renovated facility must be accomplished by school administrative unit personnel, with or without the assistance of an outside consultant. The school board shall appoint members to a working committee for the development of the educational specifications. The district superintendent shall recommend persons for appointment or, in the case of a school district organized under Article 34 of this Code, the local school council shall recommend persons for appointment. In a school district organized under Article 34 of this Code, at least 2 members of the local school council shall serve on the committee. The committee chairperson shall be the principal of the proposed, rehabilitated, or renovated facility. If that person has not been identified, then the principal of another school facility in the district may serve. The working committee must be small, selective, and balanced in composition, with diversified interests, knowledge, and skills represented. The school board shall take into consideration the following factors in appointing members to the committee:

(1) Time available to spend on the project.

(2) Knowledge about the project.

(3) Imagination and creativity.

(4) Ability to work with people.

(5) Interest in the improvement of the school.".