Prairie Celt is an anonymous commenter in the Peoria-area blogosphere who frequently posts on issues related to District 150. I have no idea who PC might be, but the insightful commentary this individual has made on Distrcit 150 related events indicates that the Celt is or was employed by District 150.
I’ve seen the Celt’s comments most often at the Peoria Chronicle, but today there’s a post over at Peoria Pundit. It was originally a comment made on one of Billy’s posts, but Mr. Dennis liked it so much he gave it a post all its own.
Good call. Wow. PC’s post is a rapid-fire staccato of devastating jabs against the District 150 Board of Education and the Hinton administration. The Celt highlights corruption and waste in District 150 while academic performance continues to suffer. Hinton and the BoE are made out to be Neros – fiddling while Rome burns around them.
I received a quality education growing up in District 150 – Northmoor (before it was an Edison school), Washington Gifted, and Richwoods High School. Washington Gifted remains one of the top schools in the state and a source of pride for the district. However, the success of one school does not abdicate the district’s responsibilities to its other students, nor does it excuse inefficiency and waste of public money that could be better put to addressing the academic inadequacies present in the district.
It truly saddens me that District 150 has come to this state, although honestly it does not surprise me. Problems related to demographic changes within the district have been brewing for 20-30 years at least. They were certainly present when I attended District 150 schools, and now an even larger fraction of District 150 students are below the poverty level. The absolute last thing that the district needs, on top of these demographic strains, is the corruption and inefficiency that Prairie Celt describes so eloquently.
For the sake of Peoria – and the whole region – I hope these problems are properly addressed.
Addendum:Â There’s also an interesting exchange between C. J. Summers and District 150 board member Jim Stowell over at Clare Jellick’s School Crossing blog.
2 responses so far ↓
1
Michelle
// Dec 18, 2007 at 10:14 pm
We were one of the families District 150 pushed out of Peoria.
I lived in Peoria when my children were born. Both my children attended Thomas Jefferson. We lived in a very transitional neighborhood, near the health department. Our house was one of the better-kept ones among our neighbors. I felt that we were a stablizing influence there. The balance between owner-occupied, well-kept homes versus Section 8 places that landlords were sucking dry was a shaky one. I would have liked to have stayed in Peoria. I liked being there, actually, and I liked the idea of helping to keep an old neighborhood livable. I liked living in an old house with cool architecture that we could afford on my then-husband’s beginning teaching salary, too. But in the end, the schools drove us out.
It wasn’t so much the education offered there (both were in their beginning years there, my son only in kindergarten when we left) that drove us out. No, it was the unbelievably ARROGANT disregard for their safety that made me throw up my hands in disgust and start shopping for a house in Tazewell County. I talked to the classroom teacher, the principal, the superintendent and the school board president and not one of them would address what I felt was a very serious safety concern.
The school adamantly refused to supervise children between dismissal and parental pick-up. Their feeling was that once the bell rang, the kids were on their own. Many was the time I would see some lone child sitting on the playground waiting to be picked up. I would sit there and wait and make sure Mom or Dad or whoever came. Other parents also tended to help supervise, informally. All of us feared what would happen if a pedophile figured out that lone children were there for the snatching, especially knowing it could be our child out there alone if we ever ran even a few minutes late. School officials stated that parents should just never be late. Of course parents should not be late, but once in a while it does happen. There could be traffic backed up due to an accident, or, as happened to me one memorable and panicky day, your younger child could have a diaper disaster of epic proportions right when it’s time to go pick up the older child. Is it too much to ask that a teacher, aid or whoever could be stationed to watch the children until each child has been picked up? One would not think so, but one would be wrong if one was talking of Peoria!
Peoria’s loss, Tazewell’s gain.
They can call it white flight if they want, but that isn’t accurate. I would have been very happy staying in Peoria but I felt I had no choice but to go where my children would be safe.
2
Kevin Lowe
// Dec 18, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Thanks for pointing this out. I missed it on Billy’s blog (he’s such an active blogger — I often can’t read all his posts
Call me busy . . . or lazy, whichever seems apt.)
I agree. For the reasons you mention, Dist 150 continues to disappoint. I wish I could propose a solution. Alas, bureaucracy/suburban-flight/city-planning/education is not my area of expertise.
Prairie Celt’s post was very insightful. At times, anonymity can be a good thing. Particularly when highly informed individuals would otherwise remain silent.
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