The next community forum for District 150 is Thursday, October 4. However, rather than being held at Von Steuben, it was announced at the last meeting that the Oct. 4 meeting will be at Kingman Primary School instead, 3129 N.E. Madison.

Each District 150 public forum begins the same way — with a PowerPoint presentation from the administration. One of the slides that is flashed up is titled “Enrollment to House,” and it shows these numbers:

One person at the Irving School meeting asked how you could replace three schools — total enrollment of 1164 — with one school that would only be able to house 650. She understood the school district’s vision of having magnet, or “choice,” schools. But she wondered why anyone wouldn’t want to send their kids to a brand new school closest to their neighborhood. Answer from School Board President David Gorenz: he couldn’t answer at this time because the board is still studying how it will all work.

In other words, the school board has leapt before looking again.

The whole thing doesn’t make any sense. They’re building a brand new, state-of-the-art school that can only hold half the population of the three it’s replacing and calling it progress. They say that the children on the East Bluff and North Valley deserve a new school, yet they’re simultaneously banking on half of those children opting out of it — i.e., “choosing” to go to another district school. If not enough kids opt out, I assume the district would have to make them go somewhere else, perhaps taking enrollment on a first-come, first-served basis.

The end result is that not only will kids be losing their neighborhood schools, they may be losing their new replacement school, too. Five to six hundred children will be bused to other “old” school buildings around in the city. This is a lose-lose for everyone except the small set of students who will (a) get the new school building in their neighborhood, and (b) be lucky enough to attend it.

And there’s another problem: can Health/Life Safety bonds for Irving, Kingman, and Glen Oak (1) be combined to build only one replacement school, and (2) can that replacement school be smaller than than the three schools it’s replacing? It would be worth a call to the Illinois State Board of Education to find out. Of course, if it turns out they can’t be used for that, I suppose the district would just get its funding elsewhere, like the Public Building Commission.

Little new was discussed at last night’s community forum on where to locate District 150’s planned new school(s). But I had to chuckle when district treasurer Guy Cahill explained why the existing buildings couldn’t be fixed up. He said that the buildings had been evaluated and determined to cost more to repair than to replace (although I believe those estimates are suspect), so the Illinois State Board of Education will not allow tax money to be spent fixing up the buildings in order to protect the taxpayers’ interests.

Of course, the reason the buildings are in disrepair is because of the poor maintenance the school district has done. That didn’t protect the taxpayers’ insterests.

The district spent $877,500 on properties on Prospect Road that it can’t use, doesn’t need, and won’t sell off — with taxpayer money. That didn’t protect the taxpayers’ insterests.

Senate Bill 2477 was recently passed by the state at District 150’s behest and will allow the school board to raise taxes for new school construction without a referendum via the Public Building Commission. That — by definition — doesn’t protect the taxpayers’ interests.

But now, we’re supposed to believe that consolidating three older neighborhood schools into a big, new, consolidated school is in the taxpayers’ interests — that it will be better “both financially and educationally,” according to school board president David Gorenz. From listening to the community forums, it doesn’t sound like the community believes it.