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:  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.

Eyebrows McGee vents her fury over this situation articulately and pointedly, so I will simply second her indignation:

The level of “unacceptable” going on here is unreal. [...] It’s one thing not to have any procedures in place because your slap-dash method of coping with lost children on buses has worked until now. (Although with the number of emergency procedures District 150 does have in place for everything from tornadoes to school shootings, I’m rather shocked there’s no lost-child procedure.) To state that now that the flaws in the system have been vividly and horrifyingly highlighted, you have no intention whatsoever of putting into place basic, commonsense procedures is irresponsible to the extreme.

Absolutely unbelievable. District 150 Transportation Director Mike Sullivan has a lot of questions to answer.

Geographically, if a Peoria high school HAD to be closed for budgetary reasons, it would make more sense to close Central.  That way the north, east and south sides would be covered and the former Central students could be fairly evenly divided.  This move makes it look like District 150 is abandoning the South Side … because they would be abandoning the South Side.  That part of town has enough problems without District 150 adding to them!

With all the negative events happening in District 150, it really puts Pekin’s school issues in perspective.  While we should never be satisfied and should always keep pushing for better education for all the children in Pekin schools, we can be thankful that we’re not facing the serious budgetary, academic and public relations problems of District 150.

I’m also throwing myself into the middle of the local District 108 / 303 merger debate.  I have a more personal interest in this discussion because I have a daughter in a District 108 school right now and three more children who will be entering the system over the next five years.  While I’m sure Dr. Dragon and the folks at the pro-consolidation blog Pekin Dragons Calling think I’m a royal pain in the butt because I keep questioning their merger idea, I’m really not that opposed to the merger.  Like I’ve said before, I think it’s weird that the grade schools and high school are in separate districts. HOWEVER … (ain’t there always a however?)

I think this merger talk is avoiding the real issues here.  If we want to help the failing kids in both Peoria & Tazewll Counties, we should be looking for extra funding to create additional preschool classes, because early childhood education helps at risk kids catch up.  We should be funding early developmental screening programs like Missouri’s Parents as Teachers … also shown by studies to improve school performance later in life and help close the gap between at risk kids and kids from affluent districts.  We should look at after school programs and summer programs – re-evaluating those that are already in place and expanding them as necessary.

Another option would be to create schools with a true socioeconomic mix … and that probably would require mergers of multiple school districts – 150 / 323 would work, but in Tazewell it would probably require merging ALL the varied the myriad districts scattered about over here (Pekin, Morton, East Peoria, Washington, Tremont).  Then, once the districts were merged, schools would be populated to create a true socioeconomic mixture so that all the poor kids aren’t shoved into a few schools.  It would involve bussing poor kids to the suburbs and suburban kids to the city.  And … I’m laughing as I write this … THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN.  In the midst of the civil rights movement, District 150 shot down school desegregation measures that included bussing.  In these more conservative times, is a grand social experiment such as this going to fly?  Yeah … like a lead balloon on Jupiter.

We need to focus on finding the funds to promote early childhood education, developmental screening programs, summer programs, after-school programs, tutoring services and maybe even a longer school day.  Those are solutions that would DEFINITELY make a difference.  Of course instituting programs like these would cost more money and, unless state or federal funding could be secured from moneys already available, would likely mean an increase in taxes at some level (be it local, state or federal).

Ohhh NO … the evil “T” word.  I’ve spoken blasphemy!  Not more taxes for the most lightly taxed developed nation!  (mock horror)  If the money is going for programs like I mentioned, I say let’s get out our checkbooks.  Meanwhile we’re wasting a lot of ink (well, cyber-ink in this case) on something that might make things a tiny bit better or might make things worse (the 108 / 303 merger) OR on something that will NEVER HAPPEN (a 150 / 323 merger).

Oh wait … I just thought about a scenario where a 150 / 323 merger might actually happen!  It could happen in about 30-40 years when Dunlap is having the same problems Peoria is having now and everybody is moving out to Brimfield!  That’s the great thing about the Midwest … you can always kick out some poor bankrupt farmer and run away from your problems instead of dealing with them.