ROCHELLE — At its monthly meeting Tuesday, the Rochelle Elementary School District Board of Education unanimously approved a $437,000 paving bid for Tilton Elementary School. 

District Business Manager Kevin Dale said the work will include expanding the parking lot to try to get buses off the road into the parking lot area, adding more parking, and improving drainage. Paving work will be done at Rochelle Township High School as well, but the elementary board only approved the Tilton portion. 

"That $437,000 portion is to tear out, redo and extend and add that additional parking including some of the water retention areas," Dale said. "That work will start as soon as school is out and will be done by July."

The district is currently in the process of working towards $14-16 million worth of needed renovations at Tilton School after finding in a health life safety evaluation that an estimated $7.8 million worth of work is required at the school for those issues. Health life safety concerns the physical safety of the building for students and staff to occupy. The district plans to issue bonds for that money in the coming months and wants to utilize an additional $6-8 million from its reserves for other improvements involving security and spatial concerns including its pick-up and drop-off areas. The work will be done in a three-year plan, which would begin in 2024.

At its January meeting, the board held a public hearing concerning its intent to sell an amount not to exceed $10 million in school fire prevention and safety bonds in the future for upcoming work at Tilton School.

At Tuesday's meeting, the board unanimously approved a bond resolution to refund its 2015 bonds not to exceed $600,000 as part of its future Tilton School project funding plans. 

"We're trying to do health life safety funding, but the state has not finalized or approved the final health life safety survey yet, so we can't move ahead with that portion of the funding we talked about," Dale said. "We don't want to lose the opportunity to have some savings on refunding. We will be doing a one-year refunding to save on interest and repayment. And then we'll come back once the state approves the health life safety to go ahead with borrowing for Tilton School."

Sales tax

Superintendent Jason Harper said the district will be hosting an informational meeting on the county school facilities sales tax referendum item that will be appearing on the March 19 election ballot on Monday, Feb. 26 at 5:30 p.m. at Lincoln School. The same presentation will be given in Spanish at 6:30 p.m. that same night. 

The presentation will include the basics of the county school facilities sales tax, and answers to frequently-asked questions. Information will also be put out to the community via social media. 

A law passed in 2007 to allow for a county-wide sales tax in Illinois to benefit schools for expenses including facilities, security, mental health services and school resource officers. The sales tax must pass in a county by referendum during an election. That has not taken place in Ogle County, and the measure failed on the ballot locally back in 2013. There are 57 counties in Illinois that have the county schools facilities sales tax.

The referendum would have to pass on the ballot county-wide. The sales tax can be a maximum of one percent in quarter-percent increments. 

The additional sales tax would apply to items that are already taxed, with the exception of vehicles and unprepared food. Based on the most recent numbers, a county schools facility sales tax could net the elementary district $813,202 per year. Along with facilities, security, mental health services and school resource officers, the money can be used to abate property taxes and make rates lower for property owners within the district.

The elementary school district has seen large expenses recently as it deals with aging buildings. Tilton Elementary School was built in 1949. Central Elementary School was built in 1939 and May Elementary School was built in 1959.

It was said at the Rochelle Elementary School District’s November meeting that it could leverage that hypothetical $813,202 a year in new sales tax funds into about $8.8 million in projects. 

RMS

The board heard an update on Rochelle Middle School from RMS Principal Jordan Young. The school's mid-year data is better than it was in 2022.

"It's much more positive," Young said. "One of the big challenges we see in our data from this point forward is keeping middle school kids motivated. Especially with some of our older kids. Assessments are taken in May when summer is coming and high school is around the corner and we need kids to buy into that. We've changed some things and we're talking more with kids about that and we're seeing better trends.”

The RMS tutoring program with Northern Illinois University students has expanded into another classroom and more tutors are being recruited. 

"Staff overall are seeing a boost in the self esteem of those students," Young said. "They're raising their hands more in class and that's hopefully resulting in higher scores for them on assessments."

Funding for the next year of the program is expected, but a "wait-and-see" approach is being taken. 

Instructional coaching

The board unanimously approved a new instructional coaching program for the district's teachers. Harper said the transition will take place next year and the purpose is to work alongside teachers in a non-evaluative manner. Teachers will have a trained coach to help them work through what's going on in classrooms. 

"The point is to be focused on how we can create the conditions for more growth to be happening in the classroom," Harper said. "We feel the positions we've been dedicating as curriculum coaches can pivot their purpose to more of this instructional coaching."

The new instructional coaching program will now have the job position posted for applicants with plans to start in the fall. The program's effectiveness will be evaluated over three years.