Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced recently his intention to eliminate over half of Illinois’ school districts through mandatory consolidation. There are already bills introduced in the state legislature toward that end:
State Senator Jeffrey M. Schoenberg (D-Evanston) recently introduced a bill, SB1324, which proposes to amend the Illinois School Code to require the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) to conduct a feasibility and cost-saving benefits study on the prospect of consolidating school districts in the same geographic area. The ISBE would be required to recommend specific school districts for consolidation in a report due to the general assembly and the governor on or before January 1, 2013. […]
State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora), Chair of the Illinois House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, has introduced HB1216 to create an 18-member School District Realignment and Consolidation Commission to report the “optimal enrollment for a school district and where consolidation would be beneficial.” The Commission would make recommendations to reduce duplication of efforts, eliminate obstacles between qualified teachers and students, lower property tax burdens, calculate the net costs savings of realignment, and advise school districts on reorganization.
So what will this mean for Peoria? The City of Peoria includes three school districts: Peoria, Limestone, and Dunlap. Peoria Heights’ district is completely surrounded by Peoria. Analysts say, “Anticipated targets of the legislation are small school districts with low staff-to-student ratios.” But, they add, “A less obvious aim of the bill is the opportunity to merge small, well-financed school districts with disadvantaged ones to balance economic inequities.”
At first glance, it would appear that Peoria would be a prime candidate for merging school districts. This would mitigate one of the major factors leading to population migration to the north by putting the whole city under one school district with a unified tax rate to support it.
But there’s always been a complication to reforming District 150. The makeup and election of its Board of Education is set by court order, not legislation, as the result of a civil rights lawsuit back in the 1980s. Will this be able to keep the State from consolidating this board with other districts in the region? Or can the State get around the court order by dissolving the various school charters and creating a new district from scratch? Will the State have the political will to make such a move?
The process as currently defined boils down to recommendations from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). It will be interesting to see what they recommend … if the process gets that far.
Long overdue… but the devil is always in the details.
How about remaking districts to the County level then adopting Open Enrollment akin to what they have in Iowa (assuming I understand Iowa’s system correctly). If you can get to school, you can attend any public school that isn’t at capacity. Tax dollars follow the student. Bus service would be limited to a certain mileage range.
This will only speed the rate of growth to the far side of the river. Little chance of Morton, Washington, or the others from being forced into D150.
Just what we need, Mahkno, more wasted gas and other resources. School consolidation has always been a bad idea. It never produced any of the alleged benefits, and has produced all of the disadvantages. We need to break up the govt. education cartel and allow the parents to chose private schcols without the terrible economic costs of that decision.
I hope this happens. Why do towns like East Peoria and Pekin have elementary AND high school districts? Talk about duplication of services.
Limestone High School is it’s own school district with eight grade school districts feeding it. The all have Boards and Superintendents.
Jill, The reason Pekin has two districts is because Pekin High School takes students from Pekin, South Pekin, North Pekin/Marquette Heights, Rankin, Springlake, and some students from Creve Coeur. If Pekin High and Pekin Grade Schools consolidated, then all the other feeders would also have to consolidate otherwise those feeder districts would be paying tax dollars to Pekin Grade Schools and that wouldn’t be legal or fair. So, if all of the feeder districts wanted to consolidate with Pekin High, the first thing to go would be old schools and facilities not “up to code”. Therefore, a small school district like Springlake would be closed, it’s teachers out of jobs and kids being bussed for and hour and a half every day. I am sure the smaller outlying communities would prefer not to close their community schools. Jill, it just isn’t as easy as Quinn would want us all to believe.
btw… Barnwell is baaaaaaack. Dave will be Principal at Richwoods for the rest of the school year.
Good luck, Dave!!! (And congratulations on ANOTHER paycheck from District 150.)
RE: Consolidation… is the first step towards elimination of this unnecessary level of school bureaucracy. School vouchers will solve a lot of problems if they limited the money schools can receive from other sources.
I told you guys that a principal change at Richwoods was imminent. 😉
I have always heard that Dave was a good guy and was a good principal.
The Limestone situation is silly.
Consolidate? Segregate? De-Segregate?
Let the State and/or Peoria try it. It has been to long since I was involved in a good protest [mob action, riot…]!
This is like telling the man with lung cancer to light up another one!
Think of all the six figure a year jobs people will be out of. How will they survive?
Why isn’t Ptacek finishing out this school year??
You could throw 10 billion into Dist 150 and it would still graduate morons.
Ptacek will be reassigned within the district. He has been barely showing up at Richwoods since he landed his new job for next year.
Barely showing up for his job? I would think he could be terminated for that. Wonder if his new employer is aware of this! If what you say is true, it is a total lack of integrity.
confused; not the golden boy of d150……never. he is a saint! everyone knows that. He was hired by the great King Hinton.
well, you could terminate his contract and just go into more litigation. I suspect 150 just chose to reassign him and get the year over with.
Barnwell is back in the district? I’m very, very cautious in attesting to anyone’s honesty or integrity ever since seeing e-mails some mistakenly thought were “private”. The timing of Lisa Madigan’s changes to FOIA for the state of Illinois couldn’t have been better.
Bigger districts will translate into more bureaucracy, more assistant superintendents, and less accountability. Fewer buildings will mean more time and money wasted on transporting kids from town to town (not to mention the risks invovled, particularly for those who drive). It’s all about promoting the New World Order goals of reducing parent input and control.
The Mouse: couldn’t agree more. District 150 is an excellent example….more bureaucrats, less accountability…..
Bigger districts mean smaller bureaucracy… we already have the ROEs. Less layers is better. Larger districts would be nothing more than ROEs and the Patrick Dolan system would be implemented to decentralize all decision making except for State standards.
From my understanding, many ROEs will be closing or substantially cutting their budgets and staff, courtesy of the State of IL. My guess, only a few satelite ROEs will be left. Not that I think that’s a bad thing. Too many people doing too few things. The ROEs in this area seem to have way too much time on their hands…… Hmmmmm, wonder if there are any openings? lol
why stop with schools? how about cities and villages, or even counties for that fact. let’s come up with some arbitrary radius that a county/city-village/school district may serve. Let’s say 50 miles (100 miles from one end to the other on a straight line.) how many layers of government would that eliminate?
What about townships? Why do townships still exist? What about mosquito abatement, street lighting, and water reclamation districts? Fold those up as well. In other words, while it’s fun and cultural to dis on school districts here, it misses the larger question.
Illinois has more units of local government (most with property-taxing power) than any other state. In 2002 there were 102 counties, 1,291 municipalities, 1,431 townships, 934 public school districts, and 3,145 special districts. It’s only grown since (school districts being the exception.) It was that way when I was in graduate school ten years prior.
smiles
they call that Indianapolis.
Look at a 30 mile radius of Peoria. It runs the gamut from extremely urban to extremely rural. Different areas have different needs.
So Ptacek is officially done at Richwoods on Monday. Very strange that the principal at their “flagship” school would leave in February. Also heard that one of Lathan’s out of state recruits will be leaving at the end of the school year. Wonder if the district can recoup the moving costs for this individual?
Anon E. Mouse, I’m not following your point. Texas is quite large, with a mix of concentrated urban and sprawling rural, yet has fewer taxing bodies than Illinois. The same is true for California, Pennsylvania, etc. In fact illinois accounts for 10% of the units of local government, and it certainly does not account for 10% of population, land mass, transportation infrastructure, jobs, etc. etc.
Ptacek replaced by Lincon Middle School administrator Shaun Grant. No Barnwell. Ptacek now on special assignment—I suspect that translated that means he gets to sleep in. 🙂
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x945639148/Richwoods-principal-accepts-special-assignment
Sharon–do you know who Stacey is working for since leaving D150 Jan 31st? Seems like we lost a(nother) good one.
I believe Steve is at Adult Ed–what a travesty and a waste of money since Adult Ed has a principal that appears to be staying. I believe Stacey found a job–her choice–but don’t know where. I’m sure that the 16 days I spent in the hospital and in rehab for my knee replacement may have caused me to forget if I heard where she went.
As for Steve, the District’s reason for replacing him seemed more like a cover for a real reason–does anyone believe the district wants to help Steve get experience for being a superintendent. I think the harm done by switching principals now and in September outweighs any perceived reason the district had for moving him. This district always forgets how much young people need consistency. On Grant’s first day on the job, there were four fights at Richwoods. I don’t know if there’s a correlation but kids do sense a vacuum.
Yes, I heard about the fights and immediately connected the dots. Do you think the district will analyze factors associated with morale such as decline in academic achievement and attendance, and increased fights and tardies? Teenagers don’t need grown-ups giving them excuses to give up.
Shangraw went to Ameren Cilco……a good move for ALL.
No one could fill John Day’s shoes….he was the consumate “spin dr.” and everyone liked him.