It seems the school district hasn’t been keeping at least one of its latest property acquisitions up to code, and they’re proposing the most expensive solution to that problem, of course.

District 150 paid $98,000 — about $38,000 more than its fair market value — for the house at 2126 N. Prospect Rd. in April 2006 — part of a thwarted attempt to put a new grade school for the Woodruff attendance area in Glen Oak Park. That house is not up to code because of a bad roof and peeling paint. Rather than paint the garage and put a new $4,000 roof on the house, naturally they’re talking about demolishing it, according to a report at PJStar.com:

District 150 is considering tearing down a house on Prospect Road because of pending code violations, district officials confirmed Wednesday.

Demolishing the house will easily cost twice as much as fixing it, to say nothing of the equity they will lose. And when I say “they,” I of course mean “we,” the taxpayers. You gotta hand it to the school board — they really have a knack when it comes to dreaming up ways to waste our money.

It’s almost like they had a brainstorming session where they asked, “What would be the most irresponsible, ridiculous, and provocative thing we could do with the properties we acquired prematurely and cannot now use?” And after much discussion, the answer was clearly, “leave them in a state of disrepair until the city tries to fine us for code violations, then throw good money after bad by demolishing them.”

Bravo. For your next act, how about taking a bunch of taxpayer money and simply setting it on fire in the parking lot?

UPDATE: Clare Jellick’s full article appears in today’s Journal Star. It includes this information from the previous owner of the home:

Former homeowner Wilbur Rose said the roof was starting to go when he owned it, but it has deteriorated rapidly since then. He drives by it sometimes and says it’s now an eyesore.

“There was one spot going when I left and now it looks like there’s three huge spots where the wind and stuff has blown it away. It has gotten 300 percent worse than when I was there,” Rose said.

Why hasn’t the district put all of its Prospect road property back on the market yet?

I happened to be looking up some old posts on District 150, and I ran across the post on Kay Royster’s racial-discrimination lawsuit against the school board from July 2006.

I haven’t heard anything about it lately, so I did a little research. The latest filing was on February 14 — a Motion to Compel. It was filed by the defendants (school board) and says:

1. Plaintiff has failed to answer defendants’ interrogatories and requests for production served on December 5, 2006.
2. Defendants’ counsel has undertaken good faith efforts to try to obtain discovery responses and documents from plaintiff’s counsel but such efforts have proved unsuccessful.
3. Plaintiff’s discovery misconduct has unduly delayed and interfered with the scheduling of plaintiff’s deposition and other necessary discovery.

In a supplementary memorandum, the defendants further stated, “Since filing her complaint seven plus months ago, plaintiff [Royster] has only within the past week provided the documents referenced in her tardy initial Rule 26 disclosures, and has ignored any need to respond to defendants’ interrogatories and requests for production. As a result, plaintiff has deprived defendants of what should have been a standard part of the early discovery process.”

“Rule 26 disclosures” are simple things like a list of possible witnesses, any documents that support each party’s case, how much they’re seeking in damages, etc. Yet, Royster was slow in delivering these standard disclosures, and apparently has still not given the defense all the information they’re due.

Doesn’t this seem odd? I’m no lawyer, so maybe one of my lawyer readers can weigh in here, but isn’t it usually defendants who drag their feet in lawsuits? Why would a plaintiff ever want to do this?

I see the District 150 administrators got their raises, including a very special raise for the associate superintendents and a couple others:

The highest percentage increase goes to director of employee services, Geri Hammer, who will see her pay go up 19 percent. She’s followed by Associate Superintendent Herschel Hannah and district research director Bryan Chumbley, who will see their pay increase by 11 percent. These raises are retroactive to the beginning of the school year. […]

Associate Superintendent Cindy Fischer was approved for a 3.5 percent pay raise, also retroactive to the beginning of the school year. The board also approved giving Chumbley and Hammer raises in school year 2007-08 similar to their raises this year.

Meanwhile, the district’s deficit is reportedly $6.65 million. And they can’t afford to give teachers a raise. And several schools can’t make adequate yearly progress (AYP) and are in restructuring. I especially love the fact that these raises are retroactive to the beginning of the school year. That’s a nice perk: six months of back pay in a lump sum.

Said board president David Gorenz: “This is fair. We’ve made significant advances this past year, and it’s largely due to not only the teachers but also the administrators.” Yes, they certainly have made significant advances: several schools have advanced to the next level of restructuring, the board prematurely advanced $877,500 to buy properties along Prospect that they now can’t use, and the board has allegedly been doing some advanced planning to close Manual High School while skirting around the Open Meetings Act.

Elections are coming up on April 17. Vote wisely.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t more expensive to restore than rebuild, but when a consultant tells a government body exactly what they wanted to hear — and there’s money tied to their findings, to boot — I get skeptical.

STS Consultants told the School Board yesterday “it would cost $8.36 million just to bring the [Glen Oak School] building up to code. Replacing the school with a building of the exact same size would cost $7.95 million,” reports Clare Jellick who adds later, “The studies are part of a process to secure money to build new schools.”

I’ve requested a copy of the study through the Freedom of Information Act. I’d be curious to know what exactly is included in the $7.95 million “building of the exact same size.” For instance, I wonder if it’s a brick building (like Glen Oak is now), or cheaper siding. I also wonder what they mean by “bring[ing] the building up to code.” Does that mean the city code or the State Board of Education’s code?

I’ve also written to STS Consultants asking for examples of historic renovation work they’ve done. From their website, I couldn’t find any evidence that they’ve ever done any historic renovation, but perhaps they just don’t advertise it. If they haven’t done any historic restoration, I would want to know if they consulted a specialist in that field when preparing their study for District 150. It makes a difference.

WMBD-AM reports that District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton is going to school board members trying to drum up support for his plan to close Manual High School:

Sources say the Superintendent has been holding separate meetings with school board members to explain his proposal, and while a school board vote once taken may not be unanimous, Hinton appears to have the four votes necessary to approve the plan.

Why is it so hard for Mr. Hinton to conduct public business in public? Why are all his dealings seemingly under the table? Now it appears the fix is in to close Manual High School. Hinton has been skirting the Open Meetings Act by having separate meetings with board members, a clear violation of the intent, though probably not the letter, of the act.

But why should he care? The school board doesn’t have a pair of balls among them to stand up to him or he would have been fired by now, so I guess we’ll just have to get used to these kinds of shenanigans happening as standard D150 operating procedure. I guess we’ll just have to keep our ears to the media and their sources to find out what public business is being discussed in separate private meetings with the superintendent.

Billy’s idea of the city taking over the school district is sounding more and more like a good idea.

UPDATE: The Journal Star reports that Hinton’s office has released this statement about WMBD’s report: “At this point, the superintendent has made no formal recommendation regarding the closing of any high school, nor has he polled any board members regarding this topic.”

Clare Jellick has a very telling quote on her blog from District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton. The article is about Hinton changing his mind regarding Edison schools, and Clare asked him if he changed his mind because of “the outcry from parents last year.” His answer?

“That wasn’t a factor at all,” Hinton said. “I don’t want to offend anyone, but I come to a position based on my own observation excluding outside influence.”

Isn’t that obvious? Kind of makes you wonder why he spent all that time last year asking for public input on the school siting issue. As we suspected, it was evidently just for show.

Jennifer Davis reports in her Word on the Street column today that Ken Hinton is denying rumors that he will retire in February. In case you haven’t heard, the rumor goes like this: Due to health problems, Ken Hinton is planning to retire February 1 on the condition that he gets to name his successor, Associate Superintendent Herschel Hannah.

“Please write something about it,” Hinton said when we broached the rumor with him this week. “First I heard I was retiring in February, and then I heard it was due to poor health. None of that is true.”

If he isn’t retiring, then a good case could be made for the school board to fire him instead. In an earlier post, frequent commenter PrairieCelt made this compelling argument:

Hinton should be terminated, immediately. If he were employed in the private sector as CEO of an organization and made a unilateral decision to expend over 85% of the organization’s limited funds earmarked for replacement and upgrade of plant and equipment, undertook the acquisition of several parcels of real estate for his planned development (without prior board approval) based on a nonexistent agreement with another organization, and then had the whole undertaking blow up in his face, he would have been fired on the spot.

In fact, if the BOE is unable to replace the hard-earned taxpayer dollars expended on the purchase of the Prospect Road properties, dollar for dollar, Hinton should write a check to the district to cover the shortfall. Hinton is the one in the position of “public trust” and should be held to a higher standard of behavior/performance. Why should Peoria’s children have their educational futures mortgaged once again because of Hinton’s poor judgment and disastrous financial management skills?

Good questions.