Daily Archives: June 19, 2005

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Tear down White School and build… another school?

WhiteSchool.jpg

I was reading the paper the other day, and I happened to notice this article, which is mainly about putting “mini-parks” within the Med-Tech District. But toward the end of the article, it says this:

In other business, the commission discussed recent talks with Peoria School District 150 to allow for construction of a new middle school in the Med-Tech district, which would focus on math, science and technology.

A Med-Tech committee met last month with interim deputy superintendent Ken Hinton, interim superintendent Cindy Fischer and treasurer Guy Cahill to discuss the project, expected to cost about $15 million.

So, the school district that is $19 million in the hole — so broke they have to close schools — is now thinking of building a new school in the Med-Tech District for $15 million? But wait, it gets better:

There has been talk about locating a new school at the site of the current White Middle School, which is being considered for closing.

So, they want to close White School (ostensibly to save money), tear it down (expensive), then build another school on that site that will cost $15 million. This is their plan. Let’s go over it again: (1) Close schools to save $19 million, (2) tear down one of them, (3) build new school on the same site for $15 million.

Does this make any sense whatsoever to anyone? I mean, I must be missing something. Someone, please tell me what I’m missing here.

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My grandfather, the prophet

I was at my parents’ house recently, going through some of my grandfather’s memorobilia, and I came across some letters that he had written back in 1928-1929. He worked for the Journal Star (in one of its incarnations) most of his life, starting as a paperboy in the early 1920s and retiring in 1974 as their National Advertising Manager.

But when he was 19 years old, he took a job at Columbia Records in Seattle, Washington. During the year he worked there, he wrote home to his folks, and they kept his letters. One particularly interesting passage was this one, from a letter he wrote April 14, 1929, a little over a month before his 20th birthday:

I’m glad you got to see the show, Mother. Take Dad to one of the all-talkings sometime. I think he’ll like it. They are just like vaudeville. Mr. Kilgore is just like Dad. He doesn’t care for moving pictures. I’ll bet within ten years there won’t be any vaudeville shows. They will all be talking pictures. Even the big shows in Seattle are doing away with vaudeville.

And how right he was! I get a kick out of his prescience every time I read it. It’s also interesting to me that even though technologies change, people’s reactions remain the same. His dad was reluctant to embrace the new “talking pictures” technology. I remember hearing this same reluctance from some people when computers replaced typewriters and CDs replaced vinyl records. Pretty soon it will be iPods and egocasting replacing radio and IP-VOD replacing cable TV.

And somewhere, some 20-year-old will probably write an e-mail or instant message to his mom saying, “tell Dad to try these new IP-VOD movies — I bet within ten years there won’t be any cable TV….” But his grandkids will never read his wise words, because the technology on which it was written will be obsolete by then.