District 150 has four superintendents. There’s Ken Hinton, of course, who got his certification after he was hired as superintendent. Then there are the two “associate superintendents” — Herschel Hannah and Cindy Fischer — who were hired to act as superintendents while Hinton was getting his certification; they were later retained permanently. And finally, there’s the “assistant superintendent,” Cheryl Sanfilip.

Hinton had surgery and has been out for months, working from home we’ve been assured. Until yesterday:

Associate superintendents Herschel Hannah and Cindy Fischer have been named “deputy superintendents,” according to a news release sent out Wednesday. The announcement came hours after the Journal Star began inquiring about Hinton’s status.

What I think is funny is that the district felt the need to give them a new title: “deputy” superintendent. I mean, they’re already Associate Superintendents, and they were in charge before Hinton got his certification. What’s with the new title all of a sudden?

Fortunately for the district [/sarcasm], they have as many superintendents as a baseball team has relief pitchers, so they’re more than adequately covered in the event that one or three of their superintendents are incapacitated.

The key to figuring out what District 150 is doing is to look at the Master Facilities Plan from October 11, 2005. That’s their playbook. Not that they haven’t deviated from it, but it’s still their preferred scenario. If they could have everything they wanted, it would look like the Master Facilities Plan.

Sticking to the Plan

So far, they’ve stuck pretty close to it. The first thing was to replace Harrison school. They’re in the process of that right now. They were originally going to use Health/Life Safety (HLS) bonds to pay for it, but they recently decided to go through the Public Building Commission instead. Apparently they’re not worried about losing that HLS money.

The next thing was to close and not replace White and Blaine-Sumner schools. Done. Although, while they stopped using Blaine-Sumner for a school, they’ve done some remodeling and now use it for offices, which means they didn’t actually save any money in facility expenses with that move.

Next was their plan to add seventh and eighth grade classes to Manual High School. I don’t know if this was ever done. However, they did use Manual to house some troubled elementary school kids — a program they want to move to their newly-acquired Knoxville building (the one that used to be the Social Security administration office). So, while they were supposedly trying to reduce the number of facilities to save money, they’ve actually acquired another one instead.

Sticking it to the East Bluff

After that, the plan talks about phasing out Glen Oak School and either building a new school adjacent to Glen Oak Park or expanding the Von Steuben campus to K-8. The school board got shot down on the park plan, but strangely, there’s been no talk of expanding Von Steuben as an alternative. Instead, the district abandoned the East Bluff and started focusing more on Harrison and the north valley schools.

So, now we’re up to the part of the plan where they propose to combine Irving and Kingman school into one new school which they want to put on or adjacent to Morton Square.

First, it’s worth mentioning that Glen Oak School has been lumped into this replacement school now, whereas it wasn’t that way in the master plan. One wonders if this is some sort of revenge on the East Bluff for thwarting the board’s plans to put a school adjacent to Glen Oak Park. I sincerely hope that’s not the reason, as it only hurts the children.

Second, it was recently reported in the paper that Morton Square is in an historic district, so the school board has taken that potential site off the table. Many neighbors in that area were opposed to that site, although some spoke out in favor of it at the community forums.

The illusion of inclusion

So now the school board says it’s considering the current Glen Oak School site and the site adjacent to Lincoln Middle School as possible locations to put the replacement school for Glen Oak, Irving, and Kingman. I’ll bet you any amount of money that the site adjacent to Lincoln school wins. Why? Because of the narrowly-defined criteria for site selection.

The school board has divided their site requirements into two categories: “size” and “amenities.” For size, they require:

• The site should be large enough to accommodate the District’s 120,000 sq. ft. B – 8
• Including ample fitness and wellness spaces, parking, and loading/unloading zones for buses and parents
• Single story building minimum site size is 12 – 15 acres without adjacent, accessible open space
• Two story building minimum site size 6 – 8 acres with adjacent, accessible open space

For amenities, they list these requirements as “desirable”:

• adjacency to parks and programs, libraries, recreational centers, not-for-profit community organizations providing—as part of their mission—services to school-age youth, and/or other similar such service providers
• adjacency to police, fire, and/or other public service agencies
• adjacency to other schools, including institutions of higher education

Given these criteria, very few sites are even possible in the older part of the city. The criteria favor the Glen Oak Park and/or Morton Square site, which are both off the table now. Since the Lincoln site is next to a park, next to a school, and arguably has the least amount of land acquisition required, it’s practically pre-ordained to be the site for the new replacement school.

The crux of the matter is that many people fundamentally disagree with the criteria the school board has set. Many people believe that a central location that minimizes busing should be high on the list of criteria. Many people believe that being near another school is not necessarily “desirable.” There certainly is no justification for the inflated acreage requirements.

But the criteria are not up for discussion. The school board has stacked the deck. They’ve asked the public to play a fixed game. We’re being given only the illusion of inclusion. Ever heard the phrase, “the house always wins”? The school board is the house in this game.

Future plans

If they continue following their “full plan,” we can expect Tyng and Garfield to be closed, Garfield to be demolished, and a new school built on that site. They’ll call the new school Tyng. Then Woodrow Wilson and Loucks will be shuttered and a new building will be built somewhere near Peoria Central High. While not stated, my guess this will be the new Renaissance Park “technology” school they want to build. I have no idea what site they will find, but it will undoubtedly be controversial, wherever it is.

The many and various pieces of Keller School will be combined into one new or enlarged building on one side of the road — which is actually a good idea whose time has come. I never understood why they would split an elementary school campus across a busy street in the first place.

Finally, Lindberg Middle School will be enlarged. Trewyn and Calvin Coolidge will be remodeled. And Whittier will get a new building on the same site… according to the plan.

The next community forum for District 150 is Thursday, October 4. However, rather than being held at Von Steuben, it was announced at the last meeting that the Oct. 4 meeting will be at Kingman Primary School instead, 3129 N.E. Madison.

Each District 150 public forum begins the same way — with a PowerPoint presentation from the administration. One of the slides that is flashed up is titled “Enrollment to House,” and it shows these numbers:

One person at the Irving School meeting asked how you could replace three schools — total enrollment of 1164 — with one school that would only be able to house 650. She understood the school district’s vision of having magnet, or “choice,” schools. But she wondered why anyone wouldn’t want to send their kids to a brand new school closest to their neighborhood. Answer from School Board President David Gorenz: he couldn’t answer at this time because the board is still studying how it will all work.

In other words, the school board has leapt before looking again.

The whole thing doesn’t make any sense. They’re building a brand new, state-of-the-art school that can only hold half the population of the three it’s replacing and calling it progress. They say that the children on the East Bluff and North Valley deserve a new school, yet they’re simultaneously banking on half of those children opting out of it — i.e., “choosing” to go to another district school. If not enough kids opt out, I assume the district would have to make them go somewhere else, perhaps taking enrollment on a first-come, first-served basis.

The end result is that not only will kids be losing their neighborhood schools, they may be losing their new replacement school, too. Five to six hundred children will be bused to other “old” school buildings around in the city. This is a lose-lose for everyone except the small set of students who will (a) get the new school building in their neighborhood, and (b) be lucky enough to attend it.

And there’s another problem: can Health/Life Safety bonds for Irving, Kingman, and Glen Oak (1) be combined to build only one replacement school, and (2) can that replacement school be smaller than than the three schools it’s replacing? It would be worth a call to the Illinois State Board of Education to find out. Of course, if it turns out they can’t be used for that, I suppose the district would just get its funding elsewhere, like the Public Building Commission.