The Journal Star provides on their website a copy of the “Questions and Answer” sheet Ken Hinton distributed at the special District 150 School Board meeting on Monday. On pages three and four, it says this:

9. What is the actual size of the property being acquired at the park site. DW

ANSWER: A total of 10.47 acres is being acquired at the Park site either by actual purchase by the School District or subject to the 99-year Intergovernmental Agreement. In addition, however, Glen Oak Park is 110 acres and all of the facilities will be available for school use subject to mutually agreed rules and regulations (scheduling, etc.) The general Park site includes such things as Centennial Playground, the theatre bandshell, baseball/softball diamonds, Children’s Museum, Zoo, soccer fields, nature areas, numerous tennis courts (some of which are currently being used by Woodruff High School) and Botanical Gardens and Conservatory.

At the Park District Board meeting tonight, East Bluff United Neighborhood Association president Marty Palmer asked the board members about that answer during the public comments period. I wasn’t personally there to hear it, but he reports to me in an e-mail that “the board denied all of the answers” to that question, and “they (board) have not talked to #150 at all since the letter of intent was signed.”

So it does appear that District 150 is (once again) jumping the gun on their site plans. Until they have an actual intergovernmental agreement (not just a letter of intent), they can’t assume all of the things they’re proposing in their question and answer document.

But there’s something else that’s questionable about their answer to this question and question 18 (“Would the city be willing to cover the cost of going to the park if the current school site is chosen”). Please bear with me as I set this up:

One of the big selling factors for the park site is that the kids will be able to utilize the park because they’ll be immediately adjacent to it. Specifically, the document mentions such things as the baseball diamonds, zoo, children’s museum, tennis courts, and botanical gardens. Has anyone looked at how far away from the park site these features are?

The land the school wants to build on is on the corner of Frye and Prospect. Even assuming the school building would sit on the farthest northeast corner of the proposed site (which would be unlikely), the approximate distances from the building to these wonderful amenities are:

For comparison, a city block in that area is about 350 feet. So, the closest baseball diamond is about a block away, and the botanical gardens are almost four blocks away — almost as far as it is from the current Glen Oak School to the park. Are we to assume that these children are going to walk from the new school building to these features?

I’ll buy the baseball diamonds. But do you really see 30-60 six-year-olds trapsing across the park to the zoo when it’s 94 degrees outside or raining? Or walking two and a half blocks to the children’s museum in the snow in 25 degree weather? Or ever walking to the botanical gardens even if it were 72 and sunny?

My point is that it’s very likely these kids are going to be loaded up on buses and driven to many of these different parts of the park anyway (which makes their question 18 moot). And if that’s the case, why can’t they do that from the current Glen Oak School site now? Obviously the cost of transportation to the park would be far less, even given the price of gas these days, than the cost of either building on the park site or creating a 10-acre campus at Wisconsin and Frye.