Okay, I’m really not going to be posting for a while this time

Nose to the Grindstone

Seriously, folks, it’s time for me to really put my nose to the grindstone and heavily focus on editing the big Christmas program for Christmas Eve at 10:30 p.m. and Christmas Day at 12 noon on WEEK-TV. Thanks to a couple snow days and some big news days I got a little carried away with the blogging stuff.

But the time has come. I wish to remain employed, and unlike Billy, I get $0 from blogging. So it must take a backseat for the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, please feel free to comment on anything you’d like in response to this post — treat it as an open thread — and don’t forget to visit the fine folks on my blogroll.

Merry Christmas!

UPDATE (12/17): There’s an article in the Journal Star about the big Christmas production I’m editing. The article by Michael Miller and including many pictures of the concert is called “Holiday Celebrations.”

Cassidy: “40 to 50 tapes were erased that shouldn’t have been”

At the Park Board meeting last night, Board President Tim Cassidy stated that “our board secretary [Joyce McLemore] was not familiar with the law” when she erased audio tapes of executive sessions that are to be kept for 18 months according to the Illinois Open Meetings Act. He added that the March 8 tape — the one requested in a lawsuit against the Board — “was not erased because of anything having to do with this [school siting] project.”

Cassidy also said that the fault for the erasures ultimately lies with the Board of Trustees, which he said “does not have a policy” on retention and disposal of executive session tapes. As a result, Cassidy revealed that “40 to 50 tapes were erased that shouldn’t have been.”

Just in case you’re wondering what the Open Meetings Act says about audio recordings, here it is from 5 ILCS 120:

Sec. 2.06. (a) All public bodies shall keep written minutes of all their meetings, whether open or closed, and a verbatim record of all their closed meetings in the form of an audio or video recording.

[…]

(c) The verbatim record may be destroyed without notification to or the approval of a records commission or the State Archivist under the Local Records Act or the State Records Act no less than 18 months after the completion of the meeting recorded but only after:

(1) the public body approves the destruction of a particular recording; and

(2) the public body approves minutes of the closed meeting that meet the written minutes requirements of subsection (a) of this Section.

The part of the act requiring a verbatim recording of closed sessions was signed into law by Gov. Blagojevich on August 12, 2003, and took effect January 1, 2004. This would be during McLemore’s tenure as board secretary. She has been making recordings and storing them since January 2004, according to her testimony, so she was aware of and compliant with at least section 2.06(a). She also said she thought she could destroy the tapes after the minutes were approved and released to the public, which is one of the requirements for disposal as shown in section 2.06(c)(2). However, she was unaware of the 18-month retention requirement in section 2.06(c) and the public-body-approval requirement in section 2.06(c)(1).

All I can say is, the timing and scope of this error is most unfortunate. It appears that all the executive session tapes from the effective date of the law had been kept up until June of this year. Then all the tapes of meetings with approved and released minutes (40 to 50, according to Cassidy) were destroyed, just a month after a lawsuit was filed against the Park District regarding the proceedings of one of those tapes.

So far, comments to my blog have been 100% in defense of McLemore. And I have to admit that I have no axe to grind with the board secretary. We all make mistakes, and I’m not suggesting that I want her to go to prison over this or anything. However, given the circumstances, I think a certain amount of suspicion regarding this act is justifiable. Hence, I believe it should be investigated, if for no other reason than to remove that suspicion.

Otherwise, doubts will continue to linger, such as this one from Merle Widmer: “Of course many [tapes] were [erased]; who would just erase the most damaging tape without erasing a bunch of others to make it look like just a housecleaning act? No one in the tax funded public sector erases a tape from an executive committee closed session without the approval from at least three entities: The administrator, the attorney and the full board.”

Park Board meeting review: Bee serious

See the beeLast night, I attended the Park Board meeting at Lincoln Middle School. The big topic of discussion, as you all know, was the school siting issue; i.e., should the Park Board enter into an intergovernmental agreement with District 150 to build a school on a corner of Glen Oak Park, sharing some park land in the process.

The most entertaining part of the evening (for me, anyway) was the presentation by District 150 consultant Judy Harris Helm. She was brought in to present the school district’s point of view on why a school sited in the park is superior to one at the current Glen Oak School location.

Appropriate for the grade school setting, Dr. Helm started her presentation with a little “show and tell.” She showed a picture of a bee rather crudely drawn by a young student, then showed a more recognizable picture of a bee she said was drawn by the same student only 45 minutes after the first one. The difference? The student only had book-learning before drawing the first picture, but had observed a real bee before drawing the second one. Conclusion: “When children only learn through books and secondary sources, they cannot practice the application of concepts. The experiences we provide shape the brain and intelligence.”

Now, if you’re like me, you’re thinking to yourself at this point, “Okay, that sounds great. What does this have to do with putting a school in a park?” Answer, according to Dr. Helm: “If that can happen with a bee, just imagine…if all this were part of a school.” She went on for at least half an hour pointing out the following:

Access to outdoors is associated with

  • Reduction of depression and aggression in children
  • Reduction of symptoms of attention deficit
  • Reduction of discipline problems
  • Environment-based education improves standarddized test scores and grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making.
  • Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that childhood experiences in nature stimulate creativity.

What does the park site offer to children and teachers?

  • Botanical gardens
  • Zoo with new Africa Exhibit
  • Children’s museum with the river exhibit, science areas, history areas
  • Fitness areas
  • Frontier playground
  • Nature access: study of biology, botany, zoology
  • Lagoon: study of aquatic life

You get the idea. That part was actually not that entertaining. The entertaining part was the question and answer period. Immediately following her presentation, one member of the audience got up and, after pointing out to Dr. Helm that all the cited benefits were programming-related, not site-related, asked if the same outcomes — the same educational benefits — could be achieved just as effectively via a field trip to the park from the current site. Answer from Dr. Helm, and I quote: “Yes.”

A half-hour-plus argument extolling the virtues of siting the school in the park completely undermined by one simple question! It was a beautiful thing. But it got funnier — trying to save face, Helm went on to say that if the school wasn’t sited in the park, such field trips wouldn’t happen because — are you ready? — it would require planning and forethought on the part of teachers (teachers can’t/don’t plan?) and money for busing (clearly, $22 million for a new facility is far more cost effective than busing the kiddies six blocks or letting them walk). She eventually stopped talking (mercifully) and handed the mic to Hinton.

Later, during the public comment period, another member of the audience asked Superintendent Hinton what programs were in place currently at Lincoln Middle School and Woodruff High School to take advantage of Glen Oak Park which is right across the street from both schools. Mr. Hinton’s answer: “I don’t know.” If being adjacent to a park is the greatest thing since sliced bread, why isn’t the park being utilized right now by the schools that are right across the street? If it is being used, where’s the data showing the superior student performance at these schools?

It’s worth mentioning that everyone who spoke to the board during the public comment period — everyone, to a person — spoke against the park siting for the school. Included among the commenters were representatives from the Glen Oak Park Neighborhood Association, the Serenity Neighborhood Association, and the East Bluff United Neighborhood Association.

Now that we have Dr. Helm on record as saying that the same educational objectives the school district wants at the park site can be achieved at the current site at Frye and Wisconsin, I think that should be final nail in the coffin for this plan. I’m not saying it will be, because the odds are pretty good that the school board will go through with it anyway unless the park board votes it down. But it should be.