Clare Jellick has written on her blog what we all knew, but that the school board wouldn’t admit before now — that the district has money to build two new schools, one on the East Bluff and one in the North Valley. They just don’t want to build two schools:

At the end of Thursday’s forum, I approached School Board president David Gorenz to talk about the available funding. He recognized that the [$40 million worth of] PBC money is out there but said the district wants to use it for “other projects throughout the district.”

And of course, since the money they get from the Public Building Commission (PBC) is available without a referendum, there’s no accountability to the taxpayers on how it’s spent. (You can thank Aaron Schock for pushing through the bill that made it possible.)

So what are these “other projects throughout the district” on which they want to spend the PBC money? Well, of the $28 million of PBC funds they’ve already requested, $21 million is for the Harrison replacement school. According to a Sept. 29 Journal Star article:

$5.2 million in PBC bonding authority will be used to update the former Social Security Administration building at 2628 N. Knoxville Ave. It will house a program for at-risk youths.

The district’s Central Office, 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave., will be renovated with $1.8 million from the PBC. [emphasis mine]

So, $1.8 million for the district’s office building. Remember that. Let’s go back to Clare’s blog for a second and look at something District Treasurer Guy Cahill has said:

The district is planning one large school at 120,000 square feet that would cost between $20 and $21 million. Two smaller schools would add at least $1.2 million to that construction budget [emphasis mine], district treasurer Guy Cahill has said.

Setting aside for a moment the folly of acquiring another building that needs over $5 million in renovation when the district already has plenty of buildings — including the old Blaine-Sumner school they recently renovated for more office space — and in fact are supposedly trying to get rid of buildings, let’s just look at their office building rehab plans. I think it’s safe to conclude that the district feels it’s more important to spend $1.8 million to fix up their office building than spend $1.2 million to build two smaller schools, which is what the parents and teachers want, what their own Master Facilities Plan called for, and which has been proven to improve student achievement.

So much for interim Associate Deputy Superintendent Fischer’s statement at the last community forum that “our students deserve the very best.” I guess they only deserve the very best of what’s left over after our administrators get their offices renovated and redecorated.

At the third of four District 150 forums last night, over two-thirds of those in attendance expressed their preference for smaller, neighborhood schools.

About 44 people attended, including all the school board members and two city councilmen (Bob Manning and George Jacob).

Thirteen people in the audience spoke to the issue. Ten of those people, including three Kingman teachers, a Kingman parent, and several neighborhood activists stated they believed the district should not be building one “mega-school,” but that the East Bluff and North Valley should each have their own school, and that they should be neighborhood schools to which children and parents could walk.

The Kingman teachers pointed to data that achievement and test scores are better in smaller neighborhood schools than large consolidated schools. They also said that parental involvement is a large factor in educational success, and that without a neighborhood school, parental involvement would decline.

Steve Katlack, who has presented at each of the forums so far, pointed out to the board that their own Master Facilities Plan recommends building two schools, and asked why that had changed. The school board declined to answer.

At the end of the meeting, school board member Linda Butler thanked everyone for their comments, but added, “let’s not be divisive,” and asked that “more community spirit” be exhibited. I found that rather insulting of the audience, who were all there precisely because of their “community spirit,” and were only “be[ing] divisive” if that phrase is defined as “disagreeing with the school board.”

A couple of other quick notes about the evening:

• One of our two newly-christened “Deputy” Superintendents, Cindy Fischer, was there to explain Ken Hinton’s vision at the beginning of the evening.
• I talked to District Treasurer Guy Cahill after the meeting and asked him what will happen to the Health Life Safety (HLS) money the district has decided not to use for Harrison School (they’re going to use Public Building Commission money instead). He said it was his understanding that the HLS bonding authority is not tied to that particular project, but is given to the district in aggregate. So, it can be used for other schools that will be replaced instead.
• Cahill also explained that the HLS money is to replace an equal amount of square footage. So, for instance, say the total square footage of the four schools to be replaced is 320,000 (I don’t know what it really is, this is just a hypothetical number). The school district could build one 320,000-square-foot replacement school with HLS money or thirty-two 10,000-square-foot buildings. Those are two extreme examples, but the point is that the school district has flexibility regarding how many schools they choose to build.
• Three people spoke in favor of the Woodruff/Lincoln site for the new school building. Two of them own land near the site. One was a Chillicothe resident who owns a house near the site he stated he would be willing to sell to the school district. The other was developer Tim Tobin who stated he has a $2 million investment next to Woodruff.