Clarification on the schools, Catherine: I am pretty sure if a family is in dist 96's zone, they cannot be turned away from the public schools under its jurisdiction.
What you might be referring to is District 96's flexible boundaries policy that dictates the maximum students per class. The policy says that your child needs to go to the school where the maximum students for the grde is not met.
If that school happens to not be the 'neighborhood school", then that is still where you would go. So, if central school is your neighborhood school, but it happened to be at max for the class your child is in, then you would be 'turned away" from central and then you would go to another dist 96 school that is not at capacity.
EDIT- I made this post at the exact time as Candi in response to Catherine. I think the flexible school boundaries are one of things that make dist 96 a good system. But, as Candi noted, it is a challenge to manage enrollment. I would think the school admin should be VERY interested in extra residential building that is going in and around its zone. The residential units can start out as $700's, but if it were a guarantee, then the developers would not be called entrepreneurs, or risk takers. They might intead be working as wage slaves for 'the man' for relatively predictable income.
miket