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Concerns voiced over District 428 boundary shifts By BRITTANY KEEPERMAN DeKALB – Jamie and Cherron Page and their two children had been feeling settled into a new home and new school, but next semester things will change again as DeKalb School District 428 moves forward with a redistricting plan that will redraw boundary lines and shift students to new schools. The new boundary options will affect between 358 to 413 students, about 6 to 8 percent of the district’s total enrollment, school officials said at a community forum Tuesday at the DeKalb High School auditorium. The new boundaries will take effect at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year. No final
Complete forecast on page A12
decisions have been made, but families were emotional as they considered the potential shifts. “We have moved in the last year, so our kids will be placed in another school that will be their third new elementary school,” Jaime Page said. “We’re not real excited about that. … We live closer to Littlejohn, but now we are being taken and put clear across to Founders.” District 428 officials have been in the process of working with demographer Matthew Cropper, of Cropper GIS consulting, for the past two years in order to evaluate demographics and projected enrollment shifts over the
See DISTRICT 428, page A9
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LAW ENCOURAGES NEW SCHOOL DISCIPLINE POLICIES
Illustration by R. Scott Helmchen – shelmchen@shawmedia.com
Parents upset by options under proposed redistricting, forcing kids to change schools
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DILEMMA New law means changes for schools By RHONDA GILLESPIE rgillespie@shawmedia.com
Monica Synett – msynett@shawmedia.com
Jamie Page shows his 8-year-old daughter, Noel Page, the school she and her younger brother will be attending starting next school year during a DeKalb School District 428 redistricting meeting Tuesday in DeKalb.
National memorial for 9/11 vets being discussed By JULIE WATSON The Associated Press SAN DIEGO – Jan Scruggs knew as a young Army infantryman returning from Vietnam that his fellow veterans and his entire country needed a place to go to heal. More than three decades later, the man who led efforts to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, said it’s now time such a wall be built for post-9/11 combat veterans, even though service members are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. “A lot of these veterans were hurt physically. There are high rates of PTSD, just like among Vietnam veterans, and if we wait until the war on terror is over, they will never see it happen,” he said. Building a wall on the National Mall would require action from Congress to overturn the 1986 Commemorative Works Act, which stip-
ulates that work cannot begin until 10 years after a war has ended. Scruggs said the law was enacted to prevent too many memorials from being built too quickly and to allow time for history to judge a conflict’s significance. Scruggs said the law is out of touch with today’s conflicts, which do not have clear-cut endings. He pointed to the recent death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the U.S. soldier fatally wounded in a hostage rescue mission in Iraq last month. “It’s not about the conflict,” he said. “It’s about the service of the veterans and people willing to give their lives for their country.” Retired Rear Adm. George Worthington, a Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam, agreed. “Whatever memorial they build, it has to be cognizant of the fact that this isn’t an end game. The war on terror is going to be an issue in the
DeKALB – Claudia Beckett believes that if a new law calling for more measured school discipline policies had been in place when her son attended DeKalb High School, he may not have dropped out. Her son was suspended from school several times from middle school until he started high school – before he was sent to an alternative school, and eventually just stopped going. Beckett feels there could have been a better way to discipline her son, who was often in trouble for tapping on his desk, she said. “Because he was a big kid, 6-foot, 3-inch, 200-pound kid, the teacher said she was afraid of him,” said Beckett, who also has one child who has graduated from DeKalb High School and three others currently enrolled in DeKalb District 428 schools. Experts, including the National School Boards Association, have said that punishing students with out-of-school suspensions can be detrimental because they not only take children out of a learning environment, but also often leave them unsupervised because their parents often still have to work. Starting next school year, Illinois’ 859 school districts will have to do such things as limit out-of-school suspensions, end zero-tolerance policies, adopt a parent-teacher advisory board on school discipline policies and address bullying, among a host of other requirements in Senate Bill 100 that Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law
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When they’re home suspended, they’re generally out in the street. I think any way we can reduce the number of outof-school suspensions is positive.” Doug Moeller District 428 superintendent
this summer. Also, sending students to alternative schools would be last-resort discipline. Huntley Middle School Principal Thomas Kim said the law will serve as an opportunity for all school districts to help better engage students. “It highlights the fact that we, as schools, really need to continue to improve our systems so that proactively we find ways to intervene and create measures that prevent us from getting to that point,” Kim said. The Daily Chronicle obtained discipline data from District 428, Sycamore School District 427 and Genoa-Kingston School
See DISCIPLINE, page A9
See VETERANS, page A9
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NIU faces strong defensive opponent in Buffalo / B1
Rockford man charged in connection with smashand-grab burglaries / A3
Kaneland High School community on alert after threat / A3
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