Wonder Lake’s school district has always been small and close-knit. Now it’s managing town’s huge growth

By the time Wonder Lake’s Stonewater subdivision wraps up construction in a decade or so, Harrison School District 36 expects to top out at 1,600 students, according to Superintendent Susan Wings.

In the meantime, the tiny and close-knit district is learning and adapting to new students and looking to the future of its population, adding mobile classrooms and a new playground this year.

“There are so many variables that will control” growth, Wings said. “Interest rates, job location, supply and demand. It is hardly perfect” to guess when the current building will be too small for their total enrollment, she said.

Last year, U.S. Census data proclaimed Wonder Lake the fastest-growing community in Illinois. Two subdivisions – one that is in the Harrison district – are building and selling homes as fast as they can be finished.

Harrison’s expected growth comes from the Stonewater subdivision, set to bring 3,700 homes and 10,000 residents to the village over the next decade. All but one section of Stonewater homes will send its students to the pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school district up the road.

“Our goal is to have the number of graduates ... replaced with kindergarten students,” Wing said, adding that there are more students in the elementary grades than in the middle school, but the district is not seeing a massive influx of students.

When Wings came on as superintendent in 2013, there were 428 students at the school. There was a drop in enrollment when in-school classes resumed after COVID-19, but when the new school year starts up Wednesday, she expects 458 students to come through their doors.

The Harrison School Board has been preparing for the eventual enrollment growth. Stonewater’s developer, NRB Land Development, paid for a $6.75 million renovation project and addition to Harrison School in lieu of developer donations in 2018.

That project didn’t add classrooms, however. This year, students in third and fourth grades will be housed in a new mobile classroom unit to ensure the school can maintain its smaller class sizes.

“We have six classrooms that will be in a mobile unit to meet the needs of the school’s population. We have rooms available,” Wings said.

The mobile classrooms “will be with us for five years” which should accommodate their enrollment during that time, Wings said. “Every year, we will have to reassess.”

While growth at Harrison has been incremental, it has brought other changes. With 70 English-learning students – roughly 15% of the total school population – the district has added staff and classrooms for those students.

“It has been increasing every year over the last three years, so we have had to increase services for those students,” Wings said.

The district has also decided to keep early childhood special education students, who were previously sent out-of-district for their specialized instruction, at Harrison. They are up to eight pupils in the program now.

On Monday, hours before parents and students arrived for Meet Your Teacher Day, workers finished installing a new playground behind the school on McCullom Lake Road.

Parents and their students came in carrying their backpacks and school supplies, figuring out where their classrooms, cubbies and lockers will be before the first day of classes Wednesday.

Kayla Hamand was with her sixth- and first-grade children at the school, meeting teachers and finding classrooms. Because it is such a small school – most classes have 15 or 18 pupils – the families all know each other.

“If anything happens, all we have to do is call,” Hamand said.

Her daughter, Taya, is set for foot surgery on Sept. 5. Already, the school is working with the family to ensure Taya will have a smooth transition back to classes, and the school community has helped, too.

“They have sent my daughter food” so she has something to eat at home, Hamand said. “It is nice here, that we as parents know the other parents.”

“I adore this school,” mother Rachel Lechner said, adding that the teachers there have been “biggest influence” on her student who struggled. “She put in a lot of effort with her” and helped her daughter succeed.

After eighth grade, Harrison’s students go on to McHenry Community High School District 156. The larger high school district, with students coming from several elementary schools, does a good job at acclimating freshman students, Lechner said. Summer sports camps and practices, along with “a pretty good core of friends” helped her older children, ages 17 and 15, adapt.

Once enrollment at Harrison hits 750, it pulls the trigger on a second school for the district, according to NRB Land Development’s agreement with the district.

That agreement also calls for NRB to pay for its construction. Design and other factors will be decided with the school board, Wings said. The original agreements calls for an elementary school on the site within Stonewater, making it easier for younger children to walk to school.

“I am not sure how that will play out” and depends in what age groups enrollment growth comes from, Wings said.