URBANA — The Urbana school board plans to hire an outside company at its Tuesday evening meeting to redistrict its schools.
District 116 school board members hope redistricting will help them pick a location to combine its Spanish dual-language programs into one building. The board postponed making that decision last fall.
“One other difficulty with redistricting our district is that one potential plan would have a single dual-language school,” school board member Ravi Hasanadka told the consultants last week.
The only company District 116 is considering at the moment is RSP & Associates, LLC. The Kansas-based group says they specialize in school planning and have a track record of predicting the next five years of student enrollment with 97 percent accuracy.
The school board vetted RSP & Associates at their meeting last week.
Board member Citlaly Yuritzi Stanton asked how RSP considers multilingual families in the process.
“That’s something we work with a district,” RSP CEO Robert Schwartz said. “There could be interpreters at the meetings. Sometimes when the meetings are held has an impact on whether or not [families] can be there.”
Schwartz said they would also try to translate all public materials into the languages students speak at home.
For a fee of $49,500 — not including reimbursement for traveling — RSP would analyze enrollment projects, map potential school boundaries and gather community feedback by next March.
The school board’s vote on the contract is scheduled for Tuesday night at 6:30 PM at the Tiger Academy building, 303 E. Fairlawn in Urbana.
Emily Hays is a reporter for Illinois Public Media.
