From the Journal Star:
Questions about eliminating four classrooms from an estimated $14 million to $17 million addition at Lincoln Middle School have led District 150 officials to step back and ask whether they should take up the project at all.
The plan was to build an addition onto Lincoln Middle School in order to transform it into a “birth through eighth” school, absorbing the students from the shuttered Kingman and Irving primary schools. Now the District 150 board wants to change or possibly eliminate that addition and use the funds to make more improvements to Peoria High School, which will be absorbing most of the students from Woodruff High School, which closes this Spring. There’s just one problem:
About $30 million in bonds have been sold, contracts signed and property deeded from District 150 to the Public Building Commission two months ago for about $24 million worth of work at Lincoln and Peoria High School. Both projects are expected to get under way this year.
So, this discussion is being held at the 11th hour — after the PBC approved the original plan, sold the bonds, and acquired the land. In other words, it may be too late to do anything about it.
This is what happens when you don’t have a clear plan and you’re working under a deadline to spend millions of dollars. The District 150 Board and former Superintendent Hinton had a five-year window of opportunity to use Public Building Commission money, and during that time they had trouble deciding on a plan. They vacillated on closing a high school for most of that time, finally voting to close it because the PBC supposedly required it in order to get the remaining $30 million available. That caused them to scramble to cobble together a plan to use that $30 million at the last minute. Now they’re having second thoughts about that plan.
Millions in taxpayer money about to be spent, primary school children wondering where they’re going to go to school next year, and the District is still trying to improvise a plan.
Thank you.
Here you have it. Promote one project, sell it to the public and raise money for it and then spend the money on something else someplace else… You gotta love our form of government. Who is accountable for this? The guys who aren’t in office anymore.
Close Woodruff to save money. THAT’S what they claimed was necessary.
OSHA comes in and condemns Peoria Central so now we have to rob Peter to pay Paul. SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE! We never expected that to happen. (Sarcasm intended)
Also, 150 (adhering to Hinton’s dream) built Glen Oak and Harrison and then the desire for Lincoln to be a birth through eight school. No one has ever told us what programs for infants from birth to pre-school age would be offered at these schools. Of course, the district built their plans on pre-school programs for which there is no state funding–and now what little money there was for STARR programs will probably be lost because of no state funding. Now the district cannot even afford to offer summer school for high school students. The District lost about $50,000 last year because they did not charge high school students full tuition. Until about 2002 summer school was always self-funded. Since then the district has lost money every year–to the point that now they can’t afford summer school at all. Now David Gorenz is asking the board to go back to the idea they rejected earlier–to make Woodruff into a primary school. Yes, C.J. is right–none of these plans were well-thought out. Certainly, the board had no idea how much it was going to cost to get Peoria High ready for a larger student body or how much time it was going to take to get it ready. I predict it will be no where near ready by August. I just looked at the board minutes for the last March meeting. Almost, the whole Manual faculty has been wiped out. Several were eliminated because of poor job performance and all the non-tenured faculty were cut. Manual will be starting all over again next year–with none of its teachers trained for the Johns Hopkins program–much money wasted for all the extra hours and pay the current teachers received to be trained. Now the new teachers (most who will be tenured teachers from throughout the district) will have to be trained.
Charlie, you stole my line! Anyway, 11 years and two kids in D150 and counting down the days until it is all in the past. Good luck to the rest of y’all.
PJStar (AP) is reporting (finally) on the Lower Merion, PA “alleged” webcam debacle. D150, if you are watching, please don’t let this happen in our district. It appears their “mistakes” will cost a good deal more than a few lost or stolen computers. sigh.
This is poorly-reported by the PJS. One board member wanted to reopen the discussion of putting elementary school children in the Woodruff building which the Board debated and discarded in the fall. Other board members pointed out that discussion had been had, the Board had voted, and even if the discussion was reopened, the bonds are site-specific and probably cannot be changed. Mrs. Wolfmeyer asked Ms. Schau to check with our bond counsel to be sure that was the case, I suspect as a faster way to cut off rehashing a moot discussion that was long-since settled.
The change the Board was discussing at Committee of the Whole was the pre-K rooms on the Lincoln addition, which were going to be bid out as alternate bids (that is, we could take or leave that part of the bid) and then the Board could decide whether or not to build those parts of the building based on the bids and the available money. With the state having cut the grants that make up around 60% of pre-K funding, thus making cuts necessary in existing pre-K (and ridiculous to talk about new pre-K programs), the PBC suggested we could choose NOT to bid out the pre-K rooms but instead select a site plan that would allow for their addition later on, and “stub out” the plumbing, electrical, etc., for any later addition, which could be decades down the road. (And could be science labs, one supposes, rather than pre-K, if needs change.) So the options for the Board were:
1) Bid out the pre-K rooms as an alternate bid and a) build them or b) do not build them.
2) Create a site plan with space for pre-K but do not bid the rooms, thus avoiding design costs to create a “biddable” blueprint for contractors.
With the state’s and the district’s current financial status, (1b) seemed almost certain, in which case the money that would have been used on the pre-K rooms would probably flow to Peoria High for the “sized” renovations (for example, you can’t build half a wall, but you can keep replacing windows until you run out of money), so avoiding the design costs with (2) lets the money that would have paid for design costs to also flow to Peoria High renovations (I believe the total for both is around $1m). The Building Committee was taking that proposal to the full Board so the full Board can decide whether or not to have the pre-K rooms bid. That was all. Not nearly the clusterfracas it’s being made out to be.
-Laura Petelle
Laura – thanks for your clarification. Though this is a popular site not everyone is a follower of C.J.’s blog. It seems important that the PJStar write a follow-up report, clarifying the decisions to be made Board.
Anyone who cares reads CJ’s blog.
The quotes attributed to specific people in the article [which I assume are accurate] clearly indicate a lack of direction and overall vision, which is very problematic. Certainly the appearance is that vast sums of money are being spent without a clear, publicized, concrete plan. For a district like 150, this simply reinforces the image of chaos that has and continues to drive people away. 150 obviously has a lack of educated, intelligent leaders who are greatly damaging this district.
And to add insult to injury, they have made a COMPLETE mess out of the transfer process. Who is going where is ALL up in the air. Again, welcome to District 150, where they do too many things, most of them wrong on Wisconsin Ave. (should be on the welcome to Peoria sign).
LP wrote “the bonds are site-specific and probably cannot be changed. Mrs. Wolfmeyer asked Ms. Schau to check with our bond counsel to be sure that was the case, I suspect as a faster way to cut off rehashing a moot discussion that was long-since settled.”
1.) bonds are only site specific in the official statement. it doesn’t take a great deal of affirmative action to rededicate them to another, like purpose. Because, you see, the ‘investors’ care more about security (i.e. tax base) than they do use.
i would call Laura a liar if she weren’t so transparently ignorant.
2.) since when do discussions of the use of public funds become moot because a decision by a former board were made impacting a new board? Laura is again wrong. the actions of a previous board (she wasn’t on the board when the “decision” was made) can not bind this board, there is no such thing as “moot”.
ugh. politics is so freakin’ slimy sometimes. ya’ll some arrogant, petulant, folks, now, k?
Glad I stumbled upon your blog, CJ. My husband found a link to it on Wunderground when he was googling the weekend’s weather. It was predicting storms, ironically. Sounds a lot like what some of the kids will be facing when they go back to school this fall 🙁
what a mess: Now why did they give newcomer Debra Dimke(sp) a 3 or 4 yr. contract yet they pink slipped people who have dedicated years to Distirct 150? Why was she worth more than others? Hmmm, is that yet another mistake by the Board?
Laura, if I am wrong, I apologize. Could you try and keep track and how much money will be spent on “new” renovations on Peoria Central?
I have a difficult time believing it will be 1 million.
ed, I’m not sure you’re having the same discussion the rest of us are having; there seems to be some confusion. Why don’t you give me a call and let’s see if we can get on the same page, since I think you’re conflating a couple of separate issues, but I’m not entirely clear.
Is Ed saying that getting the PBC to allow a change in the allocation of the money isn’t that difficult? In other words, that they might be willing to switch the money from Lincoln to Peoria High? Of course, I don’t know the answer–just asking. One thing for sure, I believe, is that when the board cast its vote to close Woodruff, it had absolutely no idea how much it would cost to get PHS ready. I know when I first suggested that there weren’t enough rooms, no one on the board seemed to be concerned. It was later that we heard that 15 new rooms had to be eked out (at some expense).
laura, i’m perfectly clear on what i’m saying, thank you. i’m not actually having a discussion, just pointing out how quickly you’ve become part of the system. folks, you need to understand; D150 used up all of the PBC building allocation, even issuing bonds without clear direction on the use of those bonds. they did this because both the PBC board and D150 know the actual USE of the money is largely secondary to the source of repayment. D150’s tax rate jumped, what…oh, someone else look it up.
funny how given all the experience laura has 1.) on the board, and 2.) with bond issuance she’s ready to roll out the ‘we just need to move forward’ message for debbie.
god forbid debbie or david revist an issue, sheesh…
and laura, when you write this:
“Mrs. Wolfmeyer asked Ms. Schau to check with our bond counsel to be sure that was the case, I suspect as a faster way to cut off rehashing a moot discussion that was long-since settled.”
yeah. like mz woflmeyer would just, ‘out of the blue’, think of a way to cut through the fog so as to let others see the light…hey laura, define “moot” in the context of what’s being discussed, namely, a competent facilities plan…hey laura, if your answer to a competent facilities plan is incomplete, do you think maybe you’re the one who’s having a discussion the “rest” of us are not? Namely those folks who want a better answer to Woodruff, a clear picture of how much Peoria High retrofit is going to cost, an answer to how many dollars need to flow to Manual…
since you brought it up there, what conversation are YOU having?
“laura, i’m perfectly clear on what i’m saying, thank you. i’m not actually having a discussion, just pointing out how quickly you’ve become part of the system.”
Gotta agree with eds assessment. Then with Chris Crawford and the new Superintendent coming aboard all hand picked by our friends at the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce who don’t even live in Peoria (cause doncha know that Peorian’s are way too stupid to run their own schools) the C of C will be living a wet dream with their Stepford board. Soon they will have all the teachers pink-slipped and bring in trained monkeys to teach the snot nosed brats. Now 100% of the budget can go to administration and inflated vending contracts for their friends cause everyone knows the monkeys work for free. It’s the perfect plan!!!