I was so happy this morning when I woke up to news that the Peoria Public School District 150 board decided not to choose Dave Ransburg to fill Aaron Schock’s vacated seat. Whew. The last thing we need on the school board is a secretive, compulsive liar.
I don’t know anything about the new guy except what I read in the paper. One thing that caught my eye is the fact that he was on the task force that decided which school buildings to close. I’m still trying to figure out the logic in that report. As you recall, they want to close 11 schools and build five new ones. I’ve heard several people try to explain why replacing schools is better than refurbishing buildings they already own, but none of them were very convincing.
For instance, they often say that those [use “old man” voice for this part] “ooold, decrepit buildings from the 19th century” are just not adequate for “today’s students” or “today’s learning methods” or something akin to that. Now, I admit I’ve been out of school for a while, but only a year longer than Sean Matheson (fellow Richwoods alum), so maybe someone can tell me what is so different about the way kids learn today versus how they learned a century ago — from a building standpoint. I mean, do they not have walls between classrooms anymore? Do they no longer use desks?
They say that the buildings are falling apart — in one building I’ve heard a part of the floor is caving in. That certainly is an outrage. But the problem isn’t the building — it’s maintenance on the building. Why has nothing been done about it before now? Those problems don’t come out of nowhere. Why have these buildings been so poorly maintained? Is it a bad custodial staff? Is it because the school district hasn’t had money for capital repairs? If so, then a new building isn’t going to solve those problems. There are no maintenance-free buildings.
I’m not necessarily against them closing schools to save money. But I don’t see the logic in building replacement school buildings when the old ones could be remodeled for less money (economic reasons) and preserve historical architecture (aesthetic reasons). It doesn’t make sense for a school district millions of dollars in debt to spend millions of dollars more on projects that aren’t real solutions to the problems within the district.