While the city explores using its enterprise zone to help incentivize reinvestment in older neighborhoods, any potential benefit may be undermined if the school district continues to consolidate and realign its neighborhood schools.
District 150 tells the Journal Star that in order to use $32 million in Health Life Safety bond money, they’ll have to close not only White and Glen Oak, but Kingman and Irving schools as well. That has the district contemplating replacing all four schools with one big building:
The new school was originally supposed to house students from Glen Oak and now-closed White Middle School. But [District treasurer Guy] Cahill said Wednesday it could also potentially serve as a replacement school for Irving and Kingman. He and district spokeswoman Stacey Shangraw also left open the possibility of more than one school being built.
I hope they’re more than open to the possibility of building more than one school; I think they should advocate it. According to a study published in the Journal of Urban Economics (2000), “disrupting neighborhood schools reduces house values by 9.9%, all else being equal.” While the authors don’t specifically study the reasons why changing boundaries and closing schools lowers home values, they have a pretty good hypothesis: “by making it harder for parents to get involved, it harms the quality of schools. It also makes it more difficult for students to participate in after-school activities relative to the case where they can walk to and from the school.”
Lower home values wouldn’t just be bad news for the city, it would also hurt the school district itself, since it relies heavily on property taxes for funding. In their attempt to save money through consolidation, it may turn out that the school board actually loses revenue because of it.
It’s time to look at the bigger picture. Peoria needs to have the Legislature move the District 150 further north to provide the revenue stream for them to operate more efficiently. Draw a line from University and Pioneer Parkway due west, then have the Legislature put everything south of the line and west of University Street in District 150.
Merge Dunalp and D150. That really reflects the growth of the city.
JFD and Anonymous, what about the residents/taxpayers of the areas you propose to forceably incorporate into Dist. 150, is it the public be damned in your view? Short of a Berlin Wall- type incarceration you can’t force people into cities/school districts for long. They will vote with their feet, as people have been for years. If you can’t convince people to live in/send their kids to 150 because they want to be in 150, then either abandon the “legislative solution” or admit you’re a totalitarian. There is no middle ground.