With another school year well underway, Indian Prairie School District 204 is continuing on with planned construction work as part of its multi-year facilities overhaul.
At a meeting Monday, the district’s school board OK’d bids for roughly $6.3 million for the construction of secure entryways at seven district buildings. The district also gave an update on the progress of its bond referendum-funded construction work.
District 204 is currently undergoing major district-wide renovations, after voters in 2024 approved a proposal from the district to sell up to $420 million in bonds to pay for facility improvements.
The bonds are to be paid for using a continuation of an existing 37-cent property tax per $100 of equalized assessed value that would otherwise have expired at the end of 2026, meaning the tax rate for residents in terms of their contribution to capital projects is to effectively remain flat as a result of the referendum question’s passage.
Since the referendum question passed, the district has been proceeding with work on projects across district buildings that are set to extend through 2032. The renovations include school-specific work at Waubonsie Valley High School, Neuqua Valley High School, Metea Valley High School, the Birkett Freshman Center and Gregory and Hill middle schools, along with district-wide safety and security upgrades, LED lighting installations and other infrastructure projects.
Of the $420 million in referendum funds, safety and security upgrades were set to account for $50 million of the district’s spending. Included in that work is the construction of secure entryways at the district’s schools.
The idea for these “secure vestibules” is to make it so that all of the district’s schools have a single entryway that requires visitors to first interact with the main office before they can get into the school.
These upgrades are being done in phases, and a number of district schools have already gotten new secure entryways over the past two summers. The district has said it is planning to complete all of its planned safety- and security-related work by the end of 2027.
On Monday, District 204’s school board approved bids for the construction of secure entryways at another seven schools: Brookdale, Watts, Brooks, Peterson, Owen and Young elementary schools and the Prairie preschool, according to a district memo. The work is set to be done during summer 2027.
The bids approved Monday by the school board total a little over $6.3 million for the planned work, according to the district memo. The district will be working with Pepper Construction on the upgrades.
Also on Monday, the district gave an update on the status of some of its construction work.
At Monday’s school board meeting, District 204 Chief School Business Official Matt Shipley said Indian Prairie is looking at “another busy summer of capital work.”
About $198 million of the planned work has been completed or is in-progress, Shipley’s presentation indicated, with another $100 million in projects planned to start in 2027.
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Included in the planned work for this year are the secure vestibules approved Monday, Shipley said.
Among other work, the district is planning to add several classrooms to Watts Elementary School, and will be making some additions to Hill Middle School, Shipley indicated in a presentation.
A little over half of the referendum question-funded work is going toward renovations at two of the district’s three high schools, Waubonsie Valley in Aurora and Neuqua Valley in Naperville. Much of that work is already underway, with additional renovations planned for this year.
Shipley said on Monday that Waubonsie’s new cafeteria is set to be completed in January, and its new atrium completed in August.
Over spring break, Shipley said work will be starting on the athletic wing of the building, including new locker rooms and a new weight room. Classroom upgrades will also be done.
Neuqua’s cafeteria renovation has already been completed, according to Shipley. The school also got new LED lighting throughout its athletic wing and a turf field and track replacement.
Still in progress at Neuqua are the front and back building additions, Shipley said, which are planned to be completed in time for next school year.
These additions will allow the district to bring freshman students — who for more than 20 years have attended class at the Birkett Freshman Center, a building a little less than a mile from the main campus — back into the main Neuqua building.
LED lighting retrofitting and solar panel installations are also part of the referendum work.
“This work is going to pay dividends…for decades to come,” Shipley said of the facilities overhaul at the meeting.