No votes lead on Lockport High School $85 million plan to renovate Central campus – Shaw Local

Lockport High School District 205’s highly debated referendum, asking voters to approve $85 million in bonds to refurbish the district’s 115-year-old Central Campus, appears to have failed following months of campaigning, tours of the building, Q&A sessions, and additional , emergency construction after a ceiling in the school collapsed in November.

By 10 pm on Tuesday night, No votes lead by 963, representing 53.8% of the vote on a night with very low turnout. The defeat was spearheaded by voters in Homer Glen’s precincts and only 15.4% of eligible voters participated. Only one out of 19 precincts in Homer Township voted in favor of the bond proposal.

Seven precincts in Lockport Township also leaned toward rejecting the plan.

While the results were neck and neck after polls closed, by 9 pm the no votes led by 400.

“We’re proud of the work we did trying to inform the community,” said Lockport Township High School Foundation member and head of the referendum committee Tim Russ. “If we lose, the administration will have to reconvene and decide what the next steps are.”

The referendum asked the community to approve bonds which would be used to renovate Central, which is currently used as a freshman center and for Special Education programs. In addition to the ceiling repairs, which are being paid for out of existing cash reserves and insurance funds, the building is in need of additional renovations including new HVAC systems, ADA accessibility modifications, refurbished bathrooms, a new roof and windows, and could benefit from classroom modernization.

The planned renovation would also replace the antiquated pool in the school’s basement with more classroom space and reorganize the interior of the building to keep departments better grouped and provide more office space for staff.

The referendum and renovations were already in the works before the Nov. 1 ceiling collapse on the third floor, which made the building unusable in the short term and resulted in the class of 2027 attending school at the empty Lincoln-Way North campus in Frankfort Square this year, thanks to a special agreement with Lincoln-Way District 210. The emergency work only served to draw more attention to the urgent need for repairs.

“Right now the district’s number one goal is still to get the freshmen back in the building by fall, and they are on track to do that, because the ceiling work is already underway,” Russ said.

The rest of the repairs are still a matter to be contended with.

As Superintendent Dr. Robert McBride has repeatedly acknowledged in recent months, the ceilings were not on the district’s radar of issues that could be problematic in the building compared to the boilers or the roof, showing just how in-need of a renovation the historic campus is, since a failure of one of those systems could have the district back in the position it is now.

“The boiler, and windows, and roof are all still at risk,” said Russ. “Something has to be given. It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when’ something happens again. That could be dangerous for students, or it could put us back in this position where we have to displace students and rent another facility, which is costing the district a lot of money.”

This is the seventh referendum the district has proposed in the past 20 years to remedy the Central Campus issue, although all six previous measures — which would have constructed an entirely new school on district-owned property in Homer Glen — were deemed too costly and failed .

Critics of the 2024 measure argued that the renovations would be too costly for a building that is already so old, suggesting that the district should build a new facility — which Russ noted would cost three times as much as the proposed plan — or expand East Campus to accommodate the freshmen, an option which would also be expensive and pose logistical issues. Others oppose any measure which would raise taxes. Neither camp could come up with a viable plan of what to do with Central if its use was discontinued, as the board noted there were no parties interested in buying the building, and demolition would also be an expensive option.

The idea behind instead investing in renovating Central this time was meant to save the residents money and address the problem more quickly, as construction of a new facility would take years and the renovation could potentially be completed while students are still using Central with some strategic planning . The district was originally presented with a plan to do more drastic renovations at the school, including demolishing the theater, cafeteria, and media center to create a new multi-purpose space, which would have cost an additional $10-30 million, which was turned around down in favor of the more economical option addressing the building’s most pressing needs.

“There’s going to be a lot of discussions,” said Board of Education President Ann Lopez-Caneva. “We do have a few options, but if it doesn’t pass, we have challenges ahead.”

Lopez-Caneva noted that there are three options the board has already considered as fallbacks. Those options include putting the measure back on the ballot in November when voter turnout will likely be much higher, doing as much maintenance as possible each year to repair little things at a budget of $500,000 to $1 million per year, or moving the freshmen students to East Campus and adopt a split schedule.

“I’m not a fan of that option,” she said of the split schedule. “My kids went through that and it was terrible. Kids were exhausted, and I almost never saw my son.”

Russ also noted that the district could theoretically take out some bonds without voter approval, but it would not be near the $85 million needed to enact the proposed renovation plan.

“This is just confusing,” Russ said. “We’ve listened six times to the voters saying ‘we don’t want to build a new building,’ so one has to wonder what the intention of the community is.”