I was reading through District 150’s Master Facilities Planning Committee Final Recommendations, and I discovered their decisions are determined by the outcome of a facilities analysis they did. Here’s how they did it:

First, they split up the committee into four subcommittees based on high school attendance area. The four subcommittees were:

• Manual – Dave Ryon, Steve Morris, & Lillie Foreman
• Peoria High – Ed Berry, Guy Cahill, Mary Spangler
• Woodruff – Dave Henebry, Cindy Fischer, Thea Robinson
• Richwoods – Ray Lees, Mary Ardapple, Herschel Hannah

Then, the report states:

The committee decided to evaluate each facility based on their respective attributes relating to several primary issues: 1) Health-Life-Safety, 2) Operational Costs and 3) Educational Programs. This assessment was then followed by tours of each school in the District. The Committee was divided into four groups to visit schools in each of the four high school feeder areas. The results of the preliminary analysis were then reevaluated and modified based on on-site observations of existing conditions.

So, at the end of the report, you find three spreadsheets with the “raw data” of their scores. Each of those “primary issues” had several factors the committee members had to evaluate. For example, under “Health-Life-Safety,” some of the factors included site size, building size, building age, building structure, hazard protection, etc.

However, what I didn’t find was any objective basis for the scores they assigned.

For example, on the “Health-Life-Safety” spreadsheet, they have to give a score for the age of the building. One would expect this would have some sort of clear-cut, objective standard — maybe “5” for 25 years old or newer, “4” for 25-50 years old, etc. It’s almost that consistent, but there are a few anomalies. It appears that any building built before 1940 received a “1” — except for Woodruff High School, which got a “2,” even though it was built in 1936, the same year as Von Steuben Middle School, which received a “1.” All the schools built between 1941 and 1979 received a “2,” except for Richwoods and Manual. Richwoods (1955) got a “3,” and Manual (1961) inexplicably got a “4.” If there isn’t consistency in this, the most objective category on the list, how are we to evaluate their scores on the truly subjective categories, such as “healthfulness of lighting”?

Another curiosity is the score given for “Energy and Efficiency” of the building, systems, and equipment. Every primary, middle, and high school in Peoria got a “1” in these categories except for two: Glen Oak School got a “3” and Lincoln got a “5.” Are we really to believe that Charter Oak (built in 1979) and Irving school (built in 1898) have exactly the same (low) efficiency rating?

Remember, these scores and others like them form the basis of the district’s $120,000,000 building plan decision. Would you base a financial decision that large on these measurements?

It’s also worth noting that, given the information we have in this facilities report, it doesn’t appear that any experts were called in — for instance, an architect, or fire marshal, or HVAC specialist like Energy Pro Heating & Cooling — so one wonders again on what basis the committee assigned scores to things like “flexibility of building,” or “hazard protection,” or “healthfulness of HVAC.” In other words, they’re giving their opinion on several items for which they don’t have the necessary expertise. I could just as easily fill out these forms with my own opinions and they would be as valid (except on those items that deal with educational issues, on which they are in fact experts). They should have consulted actual experts such as Sitton Mechanical for these.

Yet, based on this “analysis,” the report confidently concludes (emphasis mine): “The District has or will soon have the necessary match of funds derived both from available restricted reserves and the sale of a health-life-safety bond (for the replacement of a minimum of two and as many as six buildings the cost of which to remediate is greater than the cost of replacement).”

The report gives no justification for the statement in bold.

Nowhere in the report do they give a breakdown of what it would cost to renovate/expand the current buildings versus what it would cost to do a new construction (including acquisition, demolition, legal, and other hidden costs). They also didn’t state how they would protect construction workers who are injured in scaffolding accidents. There’s no feasibility study. All they’ve really done is identified which schools they feel (subjectively) are in greatest need of repair. That’s no basis upon which to start tearing down schools and building new ones on different sites.

It’s easy to see why the school district is on the state’s financial watch list when it makes big-budget decisions on such scanty analysis. The school board should throw out this committee’s report and try again, this time with some objective measurements and a real feasibility study. Oh, and community involvement.

In fact, maybe they could learn something from this report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Among many other valuable pieces of information, it includes this warning that the district is already learning the hard way: “A study conducted behind closed doors does not consider all viewpoints or build trust and support from within the community.”

Terry Bibo’s article in the Journal Star today is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read about District 150 (and that’s saying something). The gist of the article is that a Peoria family who had been sending their kids to Peoria Christian School decided to give District 150 a chance. So they put their kids in Glen Oak school, only to have them be bullied and discriminated against because they were white. The daughter even got threatened by a group of three girls in a restroom once. The last straw for this family was when a fourth-grader (one of the three girls in the previous restroom incident), armed with a box cutter, threatened to kill their daughter.

What’s most troubling to me is the school’s response. Bibo talked to Associate Superintendent Cindy Fischer about this situation and was told:

. . . the district has policies that were followed in each of these instances. Every one was addressed, in large part through a nationally-recognized program that teaches and reinforces appropriate behavior. District-wide, 150 has four committees exploring various aspects of discipline problems. And for this family, offering [to let their kids attend] Kingman [Primary School] is a respectable option: It is late in the year, so the district is reluctant to make any transfers. But Kingman has fewer discipline problems and several openings. Hines Primary School . . . has none.

“It certainly is our regret that we were not able to bring satisfaction to this parent,” Fischer says. “As consumers, when we’re not satisfied with one product, we go to another. I think that is what this parent has done.”

Is it just me, or does that response leave something to be desired? First of all, if the district followed all its policies and the level of hostility toward this girl escalated as a result, isn’t that an indication that the district’s policies don’t work?

And what about those policies? They’re part of a “nationally-recognized program that teaches and reinforces appropriate behavior.” Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for the principal or administrator to punish the student’s inappropriate behavior? Are we to believe that this girl didn’t know that threatening another student with a weapon was inappropriate? If that’s true, then this girl has bigger problems than a lack of positive reinforcement. She really should be in another school that specializes in problem children.

Which brings up another point. Why is it that the well-behaved students were asked to leave Glen Oak and go to Kingman? Doesn’t that reinforce the behavior of those kids doing the threatening? I mean, they wanted those white kids out of their school, and now they are. I guess they won, huh? Why aren’t the delinquent students being removed from the school (sent to remedial school, suspended, or expelled)? Are we to believe they aren’t threatening other kids — that this is an isolated incident?

They have “four committees exploring various aspects of discipline problems,” which gives me mixed feelings. In one sense, it shows that they’re acknowledging the problem and trying to do something about it. But on the other hand, is effective school discipline really such a conundrum that it takes a cadre of administrators to figure it out?

I seem to remember the kids in my grade school being reasonably well disciplined. Of course part of that discipline was getting punished for wrong behavior, up to and including corporate corporal punishment. We were so unlightened back then, weren’t we? Unenlightened, but well-behaved.

One last thing this episode points out (as if we didn’t know): District 150’s problem is not aging schools. People aren’t avoiding the district because the buildings are not energy-efficient. They’re worried about safety, discipline, and education. This is where the district needs to be spending its time and resources.

The Journal Star had an interesting article today on how some ticked-off east bluff residents cornered Sean Matheson after the school board meeting last night. I just want to make a couple of quick comments:

Matheson said there isn’t enough space to build a new school on the Glen Oak site. In order to have enough room, more properties would have been impacted.

Prove it. As I stated earlier, the school district is not obligated to build on 15 acres, or even 10 acres. In fact, there is no minimum acreage requirement in the State of Illinois. What’s the justification for believing “there isn’t enough space” on the current Glen Oak School site?

Matheson said the location for the new school is final, but the programs that go into it are not. He encouraged the residents to be part of the process to design the school, which will take place in the coming months.

“Remember, we’ve made one decision, and I understand that decision is controversial, but there are many other decisions that need to be made,” he told the group of residents.

I was trying to figure out a word for this, and I think Bill Dennis hit it on the head: arrogance. Sure, they’ve just made one little decision: the decision to throw 14 long-time homeowners and 7 renters out of their houses, leave a large vacant building on the corner of Frye and Wisconsin, and take more of Glen Oak Park out of use. It’s nothing, really. Nothing the little people should have any say about.

To add insult to injury, now the board wants public input. Now, the board wants buy-in. Now they want to patch things up with the remaining neighbors. Matheson is essentially saying — in the same breath — “screw you” and “we want your input!” That engenders trust and cooperation, doesn’t it?

No doubt his remarks are a reference to the recently-created School Design & Construction Planning (SD&CP) Committee. At the February 21 school board meeting, Guy Cahill explained the purpose of this committee (emphasis mine):

[T]he goal of this committee will be to advise the Administration and Board on the programming elements that are to go into the building – how will teachers teach, how will students learn and how will that affect student achievement. The core committee will also reach out into the community with several sub committees asking, “What fits into this neighborhood, what extra curricular activities would you like to see at this site, what should be some of the partnerships and what services would you like to see offered at this site.” The core committee will also be advising the Board’s Building Committee on the selection of the architects and will select seven firms to give presentations to the Board’s Building Committee. In addition the members will visit firms and school sites to see how the firms’ designs fit our requirements.

Let’s see if we can answer one of those questions: “What fits into this neighborhood?” Neighbors fit into the neighborhood. Too bad they won’t be there anymore.