I listened to WMBD radio’s morning show today and they interviewed Ken Hinton on the school & park districts’ school-building plan. I don’t have a transcript of the interview, so I can’t swear to what exactly he said, but I came away from the interview believing the State of Illinois requires new schools be built on 15 acres of land.

Not that I don’t believe Mr. Hinton, but I was just curious where that statute was written, so I started doing some checking. I looked on the state’s website, at the Illinois School Code, and at building grant requirements. Nowhere could I find any reference to a minimum site requirement of 15 acres.

So I called the school district offices and spoke with Mr. Guy Cahill (Mr. Hinton was unavailable). He said that he hadn’t heard the interview, but that if Mr. Hinton said 15 acres was “required,” then he misspoke. The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) recommends new K-8 schools be built on at least 15 acres (and new high schools on at least 50 acres), but there is no minimum requirement.

Mr. Cahill also referred me to the ISBE for more information on the reasoning behind their recommendations. I’m still waiting for a call back.

By the way, I’m in agreement with Bill Dennis of the Peoria Pundit on why this land-grab building plan is a bad idea. One item I would add to his list is that the problem with the school district is not its buildings. They make it sound like people will flock into Peoria to send their kids to a new school building or that student achievement will magically improve simply by virtue of building a new, “modern” structure.

And I couldn’t help but notice that the Journal Star already had an editorial written praising this plan on the very day details of the plan were disclosed to the public. Considering the Journal Star has never seen a park district proposal it didn’t like, I think they’ve become the park district’s de facto marketing department. They clearly knew about the park district’s plans ahead of time (or else that was the hastiest endorsement I’ve ever seen), yet I’ve seen no reports on it in the paper. Why not?