Students in Plainfield, Joliet and Romeoville will attend new schools after the Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 Board of Education recently approved a plan adjusting its high school attendance boundaries clarifying which schools the students will attend.
The board approved the student attendance boundary changes following recommendations from third-party consultant RSP & Associates and district administration.
The change will take effect for the 2026-2027 school year and include moving students from Plainfield North High School to Plainfield East High School and Plainfield High School-Central Campus.
Changes to elementary and middle school student attendance boundaries will be made later, after more discussion and research on community priorities and facility needs are complete.
The new plan addresses the most pressing capacity concerns through strategic adjustments to student attendance boundaries without requiring immediate facility expansion, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Glenn Wood.
Wood said the move was dictated because of the many new families moving into the school district. Wood indicated Will County and Plainfield continue to grow in terms of population, with about 1,000 housing units built in the last year, and there is a potential for 800 more units to come.
“This is never easy, and as we try to plan for the future, we are currently (at an estimated) 94 percent capacity in elementary, middle, and high schools,” Wood said.
This change means high school boundaries should remain stable for several years, he added.
The subdivisions that will be affected by the changes are Arbor of Plainfield; Creekside Crossing North; Fieldstone; Indian Oaks, Leewood; Renwick Place (Stone Bluff); River Point; South Pointe,
Vintage Harvest and Wallin Woods. The Board of Education President Rod Westfall said boundary changes are necessary because of uneven enrollment growth, new development, and facility alignment. “Moving North students is due to current and projected future growth,” Westfall said.
District 202 serves more than 25,000 students each year from a 64-square mile area serving parts of Bolingbrook, Crest Hill; Joliet, Lockport, Naperville, Plainfield, Romeoville, and unincorporated Will and Kendall counties. It is the fifth largest public-school system in Illinois by enrollment, behind the City of Chicago, Elgin, Rockford and Indian Prairie (Aurora/Naperville).
The boundary study process began in 2022 when the Board of Education adopted its five-year strategic plan.
In October 2025, District 202 collected public feedback via two public input sessions, emails, phone calls, and surveys.
On December 10, 2025, RSP released its updated plan, which incorporated new functional capacity standards for elementary and middle schools, community feedback, current enrollment numbers, and new residential developments.
Kathy Stefanski, who lives in Wallin Woods, said her daughter now has to start her senior year in a new high school next academic year.
“She is devastated because she was hoping to close out her senior year at Plainfield North,” Stefanski said. “But I know the district had no choice. This doesn’t make it easier to students affected by this.”
