The Barrington Community Unit District 220 community approved a $64 million bond referendum at the Nov. 5 election. The funds are earmarked for building a new community auditorium at Barrington High School, increasing safety and security throughout District 220, and enhancing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) programs and instructional spaces.
According to Superintendent of Schools Craig Winkelman, the tally was 54.6% Yes votes and 45.4% No votes. Those percentages include all four counties in which District 220 is located.
Winkelman was planning to meet with the Board of Education the night after the election to begin discussing selecting an architect and a construction manager “to help us establish a process and a timeline to conduct all of the work that we’ll need to get done once we issue our bonds,” he said.
Winkelman estimates that construction will begin within the next year. “We’re going to build a new auditorium,” he said, “and once that is ready and we can open it for students, we can renovate the existing auditorium, turning that into music classrooms, such as band and orchestra.”
Creating a new auditorium is beneficial to the entire community, Winkelman indicated. “It’s a performance space that certainly is used by our high school students,” he said. “But we’re a unit district so we actually have our students at all of our grade levels utilize the auditorium. If we’re doing a fifth-grade all-band concert and we want to bring all of our fifth-graders from our eight elementaries over, and have them perform at one time, the auditorium allows us to do that.” Other organizations in which District 220 students participate also use the auditorium.
The District 220 website describes the many problems with the current auditorium, which was built in 1960 and still contains much of the original equipment, including seats that were made in 1948. The space isn’t ADA-compliant, the power supply is limited, chairs can no longer be repaired, and catwalks aren’t compliant with the current code. The small lobby is also a problem as is the fact that theater attendees must walk through the building to get to the auditorium and share bathrooms with the students.
The new auditorium will eliminate all those problems. It will also add around 140 seats for a total of about 900 seats.
Winkelman reported that the auditorium costs will use $35 million of the Referendum.
“To get to $64 million, there were other projects included in the question to our community,” Winkelman explained. “Safety and security is providing additional security measures like additional locking hardware, compartmentalization through automated lockdown features.”
He added that will also include facility concerns, such as windows, doors, flooring, and mechanical systems.
The third part of the referendum will allow the District to provide additional STEAM programming for middle and high school students.
Winkelman concluded that the new auditorium will benefit the entire community.
“It’s a large gathering space so it can really serve as a hub of the community,” he noted. “It’s a space where our whole community—no matter what age—can access and participate in our programming.”
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
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