Daily Archives: August 25, 2008

Peoria Public Schools

Harrison School plans presented at public hearing

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There was a public hearing Friday on the building plans of the new Harrison School. I couldn’t stay for the whole hearing, but I did get a little video to share of the presentation by Dave Henebry of LZT Associates (architects):

[flashvideo filename=http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Video/Harrison-School-pres-082208.flv /]

By the way, if you’re wondering why everything looks yellow, it’s not because the camera wasn’t white balanced. It’s because everything really looked yellow in the gymnasium where this hearing was held. The hearing was attended by about 28 people, including several District 150 administrators, teachers, custodians, a couple of city employees, and city councilman Clyde Gulley.

District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton gushed that this would be a “world class school” and that “people from all over the world will be coming” to see it. It will be patterned after the Valeska-Hinton Early Learning Center.

In addition to what he said in the video above, Henebry also stated that the building materials will be load-bearing masonry with brick veneer, and that the reason the school is set so far back from the street is for security purposes. There will also be no fence along Griswold to keep people out of the “park-like setting.” Hinton would like that area to be able to be used by the surrounding neighborhoods as a community center.

There’s a public hearing for the new Glen Oak School today at 1:00. The hearing will be held at 809 East Frye Avenue, in the current Glen Oak School building. As someone has already pointed out, these “hearings” are really just “show and tell” sessions. All decisions have been made, and nothing will be changed as a result of community input at this point. But if you’re just looking for information, stop by and see the show.

2008 Campaign

Political blogging comes of age

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The New York Times reports that bloggers en masse are being credentialed as the press at the Democratic and Republican national conventions:

This year, both parties understand the need to have greater numbers of bloggers attend. While many Americans may watch only prime-time television broadcasts of the convention speeches, party officials also recognize the ability of bloggers to deliver minute-by-minute coverage of each day’s events to a niche online audience.

“The goal is to bring down the walls of the convention and invite in an audience that’s as large as possible,” said Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the Democratic National Convention Committee. “Credentialing more bloggers opens up all sorts of new audiences.”

So Peoria bloggers, if they wanted to, could travel to Denver or St. Paul to cover national conventions and be treated as the press. Meanwhile, here in Peoria, bloggers are excluded from District 150 press conferences.