Elgin School District U-46 officials laid out the district’s plans for a new middle school on Rohrssen Road, going before the Elgin Planning and Zoning Commission — which recommended approving the plan to the City Council.

District U-46 recently purchased a 12.3-acre property adjacent to Hilltop Elementary School to build a 193,000-square-foot middle school. The city of Elgin annexed 19.6 acres where Hilltop Elementary was built in 2005.

The school district is now requesting Elgin annex the additional acres and approve plans for the new middle school to create a 31.9-acre campus. Going before the commission was part of the process.

A driving force behind the need for a new middle school is school district officials’ decision to move sixth graders out of elementary schools and into middle schools, said District U-46 chief of staff Brian Lindholm.

The move affects about 2,500 students who will transition into an “academic teaming” model where kids will be assigned to smaller groups of students and teachers for most of the day to build a strong sense of belonging, district officials said.

“This has created a need for us to invest in our middle school facility to ensure that all of our middle school students across our district are being effectively served under this new model and they all have access to a safe and modern learning environment,” Lindholm said.

The property off Rohrssen and Bode roads is “an ideal location for us to invest in a new middle school,” Lindholm said.

At full capacity, the middle school will serve 1,100 students and is designed to accommodate the academic teaming model.

It would be located in the district’s southeast school boundary, encompassing Ellis Middle School. Ellis would close, and its students would attend the new school, Lindholm said.

Hilltop and the middle school would share sports fields, including two new soccer fields and a bus staging area. The schools’ start and end time would be staggered by an hour to help reduce traffic, Lindholm said.

At the Dec. 2 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, the district’s Senior Planner Damir Latinovic outlined details about the proposal, including how the district is handling the increased traffic. The new middle school would share the existing access driveway for Hilltop Elementary. The district is proposing a new full access driveway from Rohrssen Road, on the west side of the property, he said.

The school district hired Chicago-based consultant civil engineering firm BLA Inc. to do a traffic study of the property. Consultants made several recommendations to help the flow of traffic, including adding left-turn and right-turn lanes at Rohrssen and Bode roads, Latinovic said.

District officials say they don’t anticipate traffic to spill out onto Rohrssen Road because there is space where parents can park while waiting for their children.

Overall, the traffic study found the surrounding roads can accommodate the traffic increase the new school will bring if the district completes all roadway improvements recommended. The district is planning to implement the improvements, Latinovic said.

The school district met all of the city’s stormwater ordinance requirements, Latinovic said. It’s adding four detention areas on the property and will have a detention area underneath a parking lot, he said.

Latinovic said the district is also planning extensive landscaping.

A tree survey of the entire property showed there are 1,056 trees but many are in bad condition and will be removed. The district will plant 221 new shade, evergreen and ornamental trees along Cardinal Drive and portions of Rohrssen Road.

City staff recommended the proposal, Latinovic said.

“We do realize that building this middle school will result in a significant change for the surrounding area. We have met with residents on a few different occasions to share our plans and hear their questions and concerns,” Lindholm said. “To that end, we are pleased to report we have incorporated much of the feedback into our designs.”

Lindholm gave an example of how all traffic access to the schools will be off Rohrssen Road, not Cardinal Drive in the Chapel Creek subdivision.

Paul Halverson, president of the Chapel Creek homeowners association, spoke during the public hearing and read a list of concerns. He said the school district’s April 2023 referendum did not include any information about building a new middle school.

The association feels “U-46 has been misleading” taxpayers, he said.

Halverson also said the site is not adequate for a 193,000-square-foot middle school based on the Illinois State Board of Education’s guidelines. A middle school of that size requires a minimum of 15 acres, he said.

While the school has met all the guidelines for water detention, neighbors are worried because they had issues when Hilltop was built, Halverson said.

“We are genuinely concerned about this,” he said. “We desire for the city of Elgin and U-46 to be good neighbors.”

The commission voted 5-0 to recommend the proposal to the City Council, which is expected to consider the proposal at an upcoming meeting.

Gloria Casas is a freelancer.