School Board

We have an important vote coming up here by our school board that is going to affect where Alison will be going to school. We had a referendum a couple of years ago for the purpose of, as we were told, building a new elementary school to alleviate the crowding of one of the schools. Right now we have (4) elementary schools. The enrollment at (3) of the (4) is in the neighborhood of 350 students, with the 4th having an enrollment in the neighborhood of 750-800, which is much more than the school can handle. At the time the referendum was voted down (rightfully so in my opinion). So after paying some consulting company a load of money they were apparently told that they could move some of the existing schools around and redistrict, and this was after the village voted for a different referendum that funded repairs to the existing schools.

So now after remodeling Riverside and installing A/C the school board is proposing to close Riverside (Sarah & Ali’s current school) along with another one and consolidating them into one bigger school that will have an enrollment of about 700 students with larger classes, oh and for the price of $2.5 million. So we will go from (4) elementary schools to (3) with enrollments of 500, 700 and 300 (roughly). While the new school is only about 4 blocks away, it is the idea that Alison will be going from a small class to a larger one, and a school that is twice the size of her current one. The girls had dance Monday so I took care of shuttling them back and forth while Kris went to the meeting to try and voice our input as to our desire to keep Riverside open. Maybe I need to try and become more active with the school board. I realize the (the board) need to represent all taxpayers, not just those with children in the public schools, but it sure seems as if there is absolutely no plan for the school system.