The District 87 school board heard a lengthy presentation Wednesday from the architectural firm managing the remodeling of the Oakland Avenue building acquired to expand early childhood education programming. The board also approved a new contract with the teachers’ union and an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Bloomington regarding the downtown TIF project.
The district purchased the Oakland Avenue building from State Farm for $4.5 million in February. BLDD Architects of Decatur was hired to design the remodel alongside contractor PJ Hoerr of Normal.
Damien Schlitt of BLDD Architects presented a 56,500-square-foot site plan for the remodel that will predominantly serve the district’s Sarah Raymond pre-kindergarten program. Schlitt said the the design focuses on “specialization, daylight, and access to play.”
The design “turns a really nondescript office building… into something that really speaks to children,” added architect Carson Durham.
The total cost for the remodel is projected to be just under $17.4 million, but Schlitt said “that figure could maybe go down” as they make further adjustments.
The district also hopes to use the building to house part of its Bloomington Area Career Center [BACC] programming, but the designers have not included this in the site plans.
“In order to get the BACC in there, that’s really light-touch stuff,” said Durham, adding he thinks this could easily be done after the remodel.
The project is expected to be under construction between May of 2025 and June of 2026, with a projected opening for the fall of the 2026-27 school year.
“We’re looking at really fall of ‘26 at this point,” superintendent David Mouser told WGLT after the meeting. “But… ultimately you’ve got a lot of space over there that allows us to be able to expand and hopefully provide a ton of opportunities for our kids and for our community.”
Level Up
Assistant superintendent Nicole Rummel also gave a presentation on Level Up, the district’s theme for the new school year. Rummel explained that, while the district met its goals to lower disciplinary incidents and raise attendance last year, it failed to raise student achievement on FastBridge testing.
This school year, the district will be switching to STAR testing, which Rummel believes will provide a more precise measurement of student achievement beyond the percentile scores provided by the FastBridge program. STAR testing will not just show percentile scores, but how many grade levels each student has moved up since previous testing.
New contract
At the end of the meeting, the district also approved a new contract with the teachers’ union and an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Bloomington.
Mouser said during his superintendent’s report that negotiations went well.
“It’s so important to have relationships that are positive and productive… and that’s what we have,” he said, adding that “culture trumps everything.”
The new contract will run through 2028 and includes changes to teacher retirement contributions, insurance rates, and pay schedules.
“The big thing that… the union came to us with was the teacher retirement system contribution that they provide now on their own,” Mouser told WGLT. “And so the district will over the four-year period take over that responsibility for our teachers.”
He said there will also be a “slight raise” to teacher salaries, and the district’s insurance rate contributions are now capped at a dollar amount instead of a percentage.
The intergovernmental agreement with the City of Bloomington concerns the new downtown Tax Increment Finance [TIF] district. A TIF district diverts any new taxes generated by an increase in property values back into redevelopment of the area.
The city previously proposed a downtown TIF district in 2018, but axed the plan after when the district objected over concerns that TIF districts erode the tax base and divert potential revenue away from schools.
This intergovernmental agreement works to alleviate some of these concerns. In the 11th year of the TIF, there will be an evaluation period. If it’s found that a $5 million threshold in equalized assessed value [EAV] growth was not met in the first 10 years, then 50% of the TIF fund increment will go back into the taxing district that would benefit the district financially.
A less concrete aspect of the agreement involves the district’s longstanding concerns that a downtown TIF will strain its resources related to student growth. Also at the 11-year mark, student growth will be evaluated and the district and the city will work together to alleviate any additional burden the district faces due to the TIF. What exactly this will entail remains unspecified.
