Kirby School District 140 announced on Apr. 27 that all schools in the district will have a half-day on Friday, May 1. Elementary schools are scheduled to dismiss students at 11:10 a.m., while middle schools will end the school day at noon. Early Childhood and Preschool programs will follow adjusted schedules, with AM Early Childhood dismissing at 9:20 a.m., PM Early Childhood at 11:10 a.m., AM Preschool at 9:10 a.m., and PM Preschool at 10:40 a.m.
The announcement affects families across the district, which serves pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students in Tinley Park and Cook County. The district enrolled 3,606 students during the 2019-2020 school year, according to the Illinois State Board of Education as reported by ISBE.
Kirby School District 140 includes Christa McAuliffe School, Fernway Park Elementary School, Helen Keller Elementary School, John A. Bannes Elementary School, Millennium Elementary School, Prairie View Middle School, and Virgil I. Grissom Middle School according to ISBE. The student population is composed of approximately 79.5 percent White students, with Black (3.3 percent), Hispanic (8.2 percent), and Asian (4.4 percent) students making up the remainder according to ISBE.
The district employs about 258 teachers who earn an average salary of $68,179 before pension contributions; nearly all teachers are women (90.3 percent), with men comprising just under ten percent of staff members according to ISBE. There were no teachers in the district with more than ten absences in one school year.
In terms of finances and attendance records for recent years, Kirby spent $20,628 per student in total expenditures during the year ending in June of that cycle—amounting to $74 million overall as reported by ISBE. The chronic truancy rate was notably low; only eighteen students met this threshold—defined as missing five percent or more days without valid excuse—resulting in a rate of just half a percent compared to Illinois’s statewide average of nearly ten percent according to ISBE.
