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.”
Once again King Hinton is saying screw the public input because the Peoria BOE business is solely his business! And the funny thing is Hinton doesn’t even reside in Peoria – do people even know that?
As for the ploy of having four board members in his pocket any student of the 150 BOE for the last 10 years knows that it has been a 4-3 split on the majority of issues. A 5-2 vote is unusual and a unanimous decision for the good of the community – ha!
Back in the Royster era the “pack of four” were literal lemmings jumping off whatever cliff they encountered as long as it was anti-Royster. King Hinton saw that method worked and history is repeating itself.
The apathy of Peoria taxpayers/parents toward the continued employment of Hinton just amazes me! It’s YOUR city YOUR children YOUR future that is being shaped here by Hinton while the new band of four wring their hands and mark off another day until their term is over. ^oo^~
District #150 needs to close a high school – enrollments do not warrant four high school buildings of their size.
That said, a unilateral decision by a compromised Superintendent to arbitrarily close Manual High School, and distribute the children among the three remaining schools by lottery, is a gross insult to the citizens of Peoria. The BOE should immediately call for public meetings and listen to community input before making a final decision. If this becomes just another exercise in “lip service” to appease community relations, then don’t insult us and waste our time.
Although declining enrollments may be the motivational force for school closures, other factors need to be weighed and evaluated. How do you quantify the impact to the neighborhood? What happens to real estate values? What are the social issues involved? What impact will this action have on the already strained relations between the leaders of the African-American community and the BOE?
This decision has the potential to further destabilize one of our city’s poorer neighborhoods. Can we really afford to let that happen?