District walks fine line with budget information

[doctorwho]

Mar 8, 2010 9:28:52 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Mar 8, 2010 0:18:34 GMT -6 doctorwho said:

and it's OK that the case they laid out was pure bull crap ? and that's what people voted on assuming they were being told the truth ?

If the real case had been laid out- do you think the result would have been the same, or more like 2005 ?

so I'm sorry but it's not PERIOD

If what was done to '204 voters' in the public sector, was done to 'investors' in the private sector- someone would likely be in jail today

I would think that there are people that think a high school with 4500 students is too much. I also think at the current enrollment numbers, the majority of unhappy families would be apathetic with MV at BB.

yes there are people all over the map on what size HS- but remember this - the survey run by the SB and consultant showed the vast majority favored something OTHER than a 3rd HS as a resolution.

I also believe you are wrong on the BB statement - remember one large area was always anti 3rd HS at any location - BB did not appeal to them even when it was thought to be needed... and the rest of us who continue to raise the issues today are focused on balancing financial sense with needs of students. Although safer and a better piece of land and better located even by the districts own words -- the school would be equally unneeded at BB.

Now you want to tell me how happy some are to be out of Waubonsie- that was shown, not by anyone on this board but by some individuals now residing at Metea. The better question would be to them as to why

[lacy]

Mar 8, 2010 9:44:34 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Mar 8, 2010 7:12:47 GMT -6 lacy said:

"take on more taxes..." Hmmm...is that an infinite amount? I don't think so.

If you aren't "worried about a damn thing" I don't think you would police this message board on a daily basis.

Gotta keep the "m*th*rf*k*ers in line, right?

I like this board...thanks

Yes, you seem about as happy as MM was when he wrote this back in 2006. In order for the district to pursue their agenda, it's important to squelch any opposition - even factual and reasonable questions and concerns must be attacked as if they could only come from some lunatic fringe.

"I awoke this morning both surprised and relieved that for the first time in many years, opponents of whatever the school district is currently attempting to do had not engaged in their favorite pastime of the past: the Sunday morning anonymous smear piece. I thought we’d made progress as a community, but I was mistaken. The smear piece arrived today instead, although it appears to be unique to Tall Grass.
True to form, it’s unsigned and unattributed, but I think we all know where it came from, don’t we? Although I generally think it wise to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to “Never answer an anonymous letter” I was asked to offer my thoughts on this latest collection of lies, and I agreed to do so.
The flier begins with the admonition not to believe “scare tactics.” I suppose that means we can all ignore the rest of the sheet in which Tall Grass residents are told of secret plans to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what and to drive taxes through the roof. If that’s not scare tactics, I don’t know what is.
Why a $13,000,000 addition to Neuqua won’t work.
The author suggests that a Neuqua addition for $13,589,437 is a better idea. To that, I have two responses: First, an addition will cost far more than that; and Second, it won’t solve all of our problems.
The architects, at the Board’s request last year, estimated that the cost of a 600 seat classroom addition would cost at least $13,500,000. Note that there are three key caveats there: “Last year” “600” and “classroom.” The “last year” element alone means greater costs. Consider that the cost of the building materials for the high school are up more than $8.6 million in just one year (which, given the building boom in Asia and along the Gulf Coast makes sense). Proportionately, that translates to several million more than the estimate by the time we’d be able to start construction. Of course, we’ll also see labor cost increases in the interim as well, which means that the cost will probably be $16 to $18 million on the low side before it could begin.
Next, consider the “600” issue. We already have 9,200 students in grades 2-5. In seven years when they’re all in high school, that’s 800 more students than we have seats for them to use. Beyond the kids who are already here, there’s the issue of 1,000 or so homes yet to be built in the district. Does anyone seriously believe that we will see all of those homes built and that no kids will move in? Some tell me that that it will be filled exclusively with lateral movement from within the District. If that’s true, that still means 1,000 homes available in the district with kids moving in to them.
Returning to the 600 student Neuqua addition, there’s also the problem of more than 200 “seatless” students at Waubonsie, which is also seeing enrollment growth. No addition at Neuqua is going to address that problem. So now we need to look at a Waubonsie addition as well. What the anonymous author isn’t telling his readers is that the architects have also concluded that there’s almost no way left to add on to the main building at Waubonsie. That means adding space to the Freshman building and making Waubonsie in to a full-time, two building campus. Figure another $10 to $15 million to get the addition built. Unfortunately, that kind of addition means students traveling back and forth across Ogden to change classes, and I don’t see any way that the Waubonsie attendance area would support a referendum to do that, and no referendum will pass in this district without support from both sides.
Still on the “600” issue is the middle school space need. The estimate is that building a middle school would cost on the order of $40-45 million.
Now consider the “classroom” issue on the addition: Adding 600 classroom spaces doesn’t make any of the common spaces any bigger – we would still need more library, lunchroom, gym and other elective spaces added in addition to the classroom space. The only way the architects could come up with such spaces was to build a self-contained, stand-alone addition (sort of a mini school), which would house the new classrooms and the necessary ancillary spaces. The added cost of doing so would likely be $20-$25 million on top of the classroom cost. And the only places to put it would be the soccer field, the football field or the baseball fields. The school district has no power to take the park district’s land that is adjacent to the school, and they’ve assured us they have no interest in selling it.
So the much-hyped $13,000,000 addition is, in actuality, at least a $95 million proposition, and it only addresses space needs for the 800 high school students who are already here. Even CFO’s leadership has agreed (at a televised School Board meeting) that 9,200 is a safe number to use for projecting high school enrollment going forward. What if kids do move in to those 1,000 homes? We’ll need even more space, and that means still more money to make those additions larger yet.
And then what do we have? Two monstrous high schools. Isn’t there a reason that not one of our neighbors (indeed, no one else in the state) is building schools that big?
Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that? As one of my neighbors put it recently, “District 203 is 30% smaller than District 204 and they have only two high schools. Why shouldn’t we have a third one?”
There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change
The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what. The argument is that Jeannette and Howie have some agenda to see the option 6 boundaries revisted and the Board has “alluded” to a change for the Peterson area. All hogwash.
Immediately after the decision was made at several school presentations, Jeannette made it clear that the decision was made and she would support the boundaries as decided. For his part, Howie has never stated a preference for option 6; he has only said that option 6 was superior (from a management perspective) to either version of option 5 with a Gombert/Brookdale swap.
The Board has never alluded to a Peterson change. That’s an overblown attempt to read tea leaves that were never there. It stems from a public comment made by a Peterson area resident who argued that there were only two students from the area who would be in high school in 2009 and that they would be going to Waubonsie alone since (she argued) the area was never going to develop. I then asked her (not stated or argued as one newspaper account reported) if it wouldn’t make more sense to take up that question later to see if her assumptions were correct. She argued that doing so wouldn’t make sense and went on to other points. The Board never discussed any changes to boundaries for Peterson – it was purely a question to probe a speaker’s intentions.
So that leaves the question of why the Board isn’t likely to revisit boundaries. As painful and agonizing as the process was for residents, I can assure you that it’s much worse for Board Members. None of us will be in any hurry to do that again. That means that the only way the boundaries are likely to change is if the Board is willing to abandon one of the core tenets of this school district – public involvement in the boundary process – and
simply decides to make the changes by itself. Frankly, if we were going to do that, we would have done so in January rather go through the process we selected. And don’t forget that doing that means that the majority which voted for the selected plan would need to decide to undo that decision. Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider.
Beyond the practical reality lies the idea of simple fairness. We did the boundaries two years earlier than normal because the voters told us that they needed to know the boundaries in order to evaluate their votes. To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
Middle School Boundaries
One thing the anonymous coward wrote is correct: The Board isn’t making any guarantees on middle school boundaries. I think each of Board Member and the Superintendent has now said that they think it is unlikely that Fry would be removed from Scullen. The reason is simple: right now, everyone from Fry walks to Scullen. To change Fry’s middle school is to incur bus costs that we do not have now, and to do so permanently. The fact that doing so doesn’t make sense is, I think, why everyone has made such a comment.
I think the only reason it hasn’t been phrased as a guarantee is that the Board hasn’t had time to delve in to the issue, and it’s simply unfair to give a guarantee to one area alone.
Taxes Can’t Go Up More Than You’ve Been Told.
The sole question asked on the ballot seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill.
What the flier author seems to be arguing is that having a third high school will mean that the 2009 referendum will need to be larger. Specifically, the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019. Doing all of that in just a few short days is either terribly impressive or riddled with errors. With the need to tell the future required to do it correctly, my money is on the latter, not the former.
The district has, with much care and analysis, determined that the incremental cost of a third high school is $4.5 million. That’s the cost of things like the administrative staff, the utility bills, the nurse, the librarian, and the cost of other things unique to the building like the extra curricular and athletic programs. Key point: Teacher cost is not unique to the building – we will incur those costs whether we build a third high school or not. The residents of this district simply won’t agree to have high school classes at 50 or 60 students, and the teaching staff can’t be required to work both shifts in a split shift. That means that as the number of students in the high schools rises, our hiring of high school teachers will also rise.
The $4.5 million operating cost of a new high school would mean $80 or so per year to the owner of a $300,000 home. Where the Tax Alliance came up with its $15 million figure is anyone’s guess, but it’s $10 million more than is needed to use a third high school in this district.
Speaking of the vaunted Will-DuPage Taxpayers Alliance, you should know what it’s all about. It’s a small group of people aligned with CRAFT, a McHenry County organization whose sole purpose is to defeat any and every school referendum. To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
What does a NO vote give us?
First and foremost, it ends the discussion of a third high school. It will not, as some have suggested, give us more time to find a better site or redo the boundaries. The Board has been clear that this is our last effort to build a third high school. Why? Because the need for middle school space will no longer permit us any further delay. The current proposal recaptures the Waubonsie Gold campus and turns it back in to a middle school, which is how the middle school need gets addressed. A “NO” vote means that we’ll probably come back immediately with a referendum to build a middle school on the land we acquired with 2001 referendum money. Building that school ends the pursuit of a third high school, since it would no longer be possible to build a 3,000 student building and it is unlikely the voters would ever approve building a 1,800 student high school that, because of its smaller enrollment, would offer fewer amenities (programs, sports teams, clubs) than Waubonsie and Neuqua.
A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009. There simply won’t be room to do anything else without adding more space. That’s not scare tactics; it’s simply reality – a scary reality.
One side in this debate has made no bones about who it is: the members of the Board of Education are publicly known, our telephone numbers are public and regularly printed in the newspaper and our email addresses available at a click from the District web site. The same thing is true for the administrators and the leadership structure of the “204 The Kids” group. Every ad is signed, every email is from a person you can contact.
The opposition has continued to remain in the shadows from which they can safely take unfounded shots at people trying to make a difference and deny responsibility for the increasingly negative and banal tactics they use. What they hope for is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (an old IBM marketing strategy) that will lead to a NO vote.
Do you want to believe those who stand up and are willing to be accountable for their words and actions or those who sling mud and spread lies from a perch of anonymity? I hope for the sake of this community, our children and our property values we make the right choice. My vote will be YES, and I encourage you to do so as well."
Mark Metzger [e-mail]

Yes, this has all just turned out so well...

[brant]

Mar 8, 2010 9:50:30 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Mar 8, 2010 8:22:50 GMT -6 macrockett said:

I have highlighted 4 statements/paragraphs steckdad. Let me respond to each. Lets start with the last. "I just don't see the outcry"

This board wasn't created for you. It was created to provide information. To create some transparency for the community. To provide facts that others won't.

Second, it seems like a fair number of people on this board are going beyond "if things had gone as planned" to ask why they were done at all, what was the due diligence done by our Board and the Administration, etc. The last decade of "planning" appears, imo, to be ad hoc at best.

Third, "... all things 204 are evil or twisted to look that way..." Forget Doc for a moment and tell me what, if anything, I have said on this board that is "evil or twisted to look that way".

That is an accusation involving every one on this board, as your subject is "the outcry on this board." So tell me, steckdad, what have I declared evil? What have I twisted? Beyond that, what has anyone declared "evil or twisted to look that way"?

Have to finish later...

you do a great job getting that info out there Mac...you got all your ducks in a row....I think you would have been a fine addition to the SB. I am not sure how you only managed a few more votes than a guy who could barely speak english. (not a slam on the guy because I know he is very intelligent)

IMO you think you have a smoking gun and I think you do not. this is where we differ.

Please remember Mac dropped out of the race several weeks before the election. Had he stayed in I am sure he would have been right up there.

[steckdad]

Mar 8, 2010 10:32:39 GMT -6 lacy said:

Mar 8, 2010 9:44:34 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

I like this board...thanks

Yes, you seem about as happy as MM was when he wrote this back in 2006. In order for the district to pursue their agenda, it's important to squelch any opposition - even factual and reasonable questions and concerns must be attacked as if they could only come from some lunatic fringe.

"I awoke this morning both surprised and relieved that for the first time in many years, opponents of whatever the school district is currently attempting to do had not engaged in their favorite pastime of the past: the Sunday morning anonymous smear piece. I thought we’d made progress as a community, but I was mistaken. The smear piece arrived today instead, although it appears to be unique to Tall Grass.
True to form, it’s unsigned and unattributed, but I think we all know where it came from, don’t we? Although I generally think it wise to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to “Never answer an anonymous letter” I was asked to offer my thoughts on this latest collection of lies, and I agreed to do so.
The flier begins with the admonition not to believe “scare tactics.” I suppose that means we can all ignore the rest of the sheet in which Tall Grass residents are told of secret plans to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what and to drive taxes through the roof. If that’s not scare tactics, I don’t know what is.
Why a $13,000,000 addition to Neuqua won’t work.
The author suggests that a Neuqua addition for $13,589,437 is a better idea. To that, I have two responses: First, an addition will cost far more than that; and Second, it won’t solve all of our problems.
The architects, at the Board’s request last year, estimated that the cost of a 600 seat classroom addition would cost at least $13,500,000. Note that there are three key caveats there: “Last year” “600” and “classroom.” The “last year” element alone means greater costs. Consider that the cost of the building materials for the high school are up more than $8.6 million in just one year (which, given the building boom in Asia and along the Gulf Coast makes sense). Proportionately, that translates to several million more than the estimate by the time we’d be able to start construction. Of course, we’ll also see labor cost increases in the interim as well, which means that the cost will probably be $16 to $18 million on the low side before it could begin.
Next, consider the “600” issue. We already have 9,200 students in grades 2-5. In seven years when they’re all in high school, that’s 800 more students than we have seats for them to use. Beyond the kids who are already here, there’s the issue of 1,000 or so homes yet to be built in the district. Does anyone seriously believe that we will see all of those homes built and that no kids will move in? Some tell me that that it will be filled exclusively with lateral movement from within the District. If that’s true, that still means 1,000 homes available in the district with kids moving in to them.
Returning to the 600 student Neuqua addition, there’s also the problem of more than 200 “seatless” students at Waubonsie, which is also seeing enrollment growth. No addition at Neuqua is going to address that problem. So now we need to look at a Waubonsie addition as well. What the anonymous author isn’t telling his readers is that the architects have also concluded that there’s almost no way left to add on to the main building at Waubonsie. That means adding space to the Freshman building and making Waubonsie in to a full-time, two building campus. Figure another $10 to $15 million to get the addition built. Unfortunately, that kind of addition means students traveling back and forth across Ogden to change classes, and I don’t see any way that the Waubonsie attendance area would support a referendum to do that, and no referendum will pass in this district without support from both sides.
Still on the “600” issue is the middle school space need. The estimate is that building a middle school would cost on the order of $40-45 million.
Now consider the “classroom” issue on the addition: Adding 600 classroom spaces doesn’t make any of the common spaces any bigger – we would still need more library, lunchroom, gym and other elective spaces added in addition to the classroom space. The only way the architects could come up with such spaces was to build a self-contained, stand-alone addition (sort of a mini school), which would house the new classrooms and the necessary ancillary spaces. The added cost of doing so would likely be $20-$25 million on top of the classroom cost. And the only places to put it would be the soccer field, the football field or the baseball fields. The school district has no power to take the park district’s land that is adjacent to the school, and they’ve assured us they have no interest in selling it.
So the much-hyped $13,000,000 addition is, in actuality, at least a $95 million proposition, and it only addresses space needs for the 800 high school students who are already here. Even CFO’s leadership has agreed (at a televised School Board meeting) that 9,200 is a safe number to use for projecting high school enrollment going forward. What if kids do move in to those 1,000 homes? We’ll need even more space, and that means still more money to make those additions larger yet.
And then what do we have? Two monstrous high schools. Isn’t there a reason that not one of our neighbors (indeed, no one else in the state) is building schools that big?
Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that? As one of my neighbors put it recently, “District 203 is 30% smaller than District 204 and they have only two high schools. Why shouldn’t we have a third one?”
There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change
The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what. The argument is that Jeannette and Howie have some agenda to see the option 6 boundaries revisted and the Board has “alluded” to a change for the Peterson area. All hogwash.
Immediately after the decision was made at several school presentations, Jeannette made it clear that the decision was made and she would support the boundaries as decided. For his part, Howie has never stated a preference for option 6; he has only said that option 6 was superior (from a management perspective) to either version of option 5 with a Gombert/Brookdale swap.
The Board has never alluded to a Peterson change. That’s an overblown attempt to read tea leaves that were never there. It stems from a public comment made by a Peterson area resident who argued that there were only two students from the area who would be in high school in 2009 and that they would be going to Waubonsie alone since (she argued) the area was never going to develop. I then asked her (not stated or argued as one newspaper account reported) if it wouldn’t make more sense to take up that question later to see if her assumptions were correct. She argued that doing so wouldn’t make sense and went on to other points. The Board never discussed any changes to boundaries for Peterson – it was purely a question to probe a speaker’s intentions.
So that leaves the question of why the Board isn’t likely to revisit boundaries. As painful and agonizing as the process was for residents, I can assure you that it’s much worse for Board Members. None of us will be in any hurry to do that again. That means that the only way the boundaries are likely to change is if the Board is willing to abandon one of the core tenets of this school district – public involvement in the boundary process – and
simply decides to make the changes by itself. Frankly, if we were going to do that, we would have done so in January rather go through the process we selected. And don’t forget that doing that means that the majority which voted for the selected plan would need to decide to undo that decision. Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider.
Beyond the practical reality lies the idea of simple fairness. We did the boundaries two years earlier than normal because the voters told us that they needed to know the boundaries in order to evaluate their votes. To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
Middle School Boundaries
One thing the anonymous coward wrote is correct: The Board isn’t making any guarantees on middle school boundaries. I think each of Board Member and the Superintendent has now said that they think it is unlikely that Fry would be removed from Scullen. The reason is simple: right now, everyone from Fry walks to Scullen. To change Fry’s middle school is to incur bus costs that we do not have now, and to do so permanently. The fact that doing so doesn’t make sense is, I think, why everyone has made such a comment.
I think the only reason it hasn’t been phrased as a guarantee is that the Board hasn’t had time to delve in to the issue, and it’s simply unfair to give a guarantee to one area alone.
Taxes Can’t Go Up More Than You’ve Been Told.
The sole question asked on the ballot seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill.
What the flier author seems to be arguing is that having a third high school will mean that the 2009 referendum will need to be larger. Specifically, the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019. Doing all of that in just a few short days is either terribly impressive or riddled with errors. With the need to tell the future required to do it correctly, my money is on the latter, not the former.
The district has, with much care and analysis, determined that the incremental cost of a third high school is $4.5 million. That’s the cost of things like the administrative staff, the utility bills, the nurse, the librarian, and the cost of other things unique to the building like the extra curricular and athletic programs. Key point: Teacher cost is not unique to the building – we will incur those costs whether we build a third high school or not. The residents of this district simply won’t agree to have high school classes at 50 or 60 students, and the teaching staff can’t be required to work both shifts in a split shift. That means that as the number of students in the high schools rises, our hiring of high school teachers will also rise.
The $4.5 million operating cost of a new high school would mean $80 or so per year to the owner of a $300,000 home. Where the Tax Alliance came up with its $15 million figure is anyone’s guess, but it’s $10 million more than is needed to use a third high school in this district.
Speaking of the vaunted Will-DuPage Taxpayers Alliance, you should know what it’s all about. It’s a small group of people aligned with CRAFT, a McHenry County organization whose sole purpose is to defeat any and every school referendum. To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
What does a NO vote give us?
First and foremost, it ends the discussion of a third high school. It will not, as some have suggested, give us more time to find a better site or redo the boundaries. The Board has been clear that this is our last effort to build a third high school. Why? Because the need for middle school space will no longer permit us any further delay. The current proposal recaptures the Waubonsie Gold campus and turns it back in to a middle school, which is how the middle school need gets addressed. A “NO” vote means that we’ll probably come back immediately with a referendum to build a middle school on the land we acquired with 2001 referendum money. Building that school ends the pursuit of a third high school, since it would no longer be possible to build a 3,000 student building and it is unlikely the voters would ever approve building a 1,800 student high school that, because of its smaller enrollment, would offer fewer amenities (programs, sports teams, clubs) than Waubonsie and Neuqua.
A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009. There simply won’t be room to do anything else without adding more space. That’s not scare tactics; it’s simply reality – a scary reality.
One side in this debate has made no bones about who it is: the members of the Board of Education are publicly known, our telephone numbers are public and regularly printed in the newspaper and our email addresses available at a click from the District web site. The same thing is true for the administrators and the leadership structure of the “204 The Kids” group. Every ad is signed, every email is from a person you can contact.
The opposition has continued to remain in the shadows from which they can safely take unfounded shots at people trying to make a difference and deny responsibility for the increasingly negative and banal tactics they use. What they hope for is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (an old IBM marketing strategy) that will lead to a NO vote.
Do you want to believe those who stand up and are willing to be accountable for their words and actions or those who sling mud and spread lies from a perch of anonymity? I hope for the sake of this community, our children and our property values we make the right choice. My vote will be YES, and I encourage you to do so as well."
Mark Metzger [e-mail]

Yes, this has all just turned out so well...

what's the problem? sounds like he was being up front with the costs as well as the likelihood of 8900 students.

boundaries had to change with the site change. This reads like there was a strong backlash from TG on the chance they would attend WV.....

[slp]

Mar 8, 2010 10:32:39 GMT -6 lacy said:

Mar 8, 2010 9:44:34 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

I like this board...thanks

Yes, you seem about as happy as MM was when he wrote this back in 2006. In order for the district to pursue their agenda, it's important to squelch any opposition - even factual and reasonable questions and concerns must be attacked as if they could only come from some lunatic fringe.

"I awoke this morning both surprised and relieved that for the first time in many years, opponents of whatever the school district is currently attempting to do had not engaged in their favorite pastime of the past: the Sunday morning anonymous smear piece. I thought we’d made progress as a community, but I was mistaken. The smear piece arrived today instead, although it appears to be unique to Tall Grass.
True to form, it’s unsigned and unattributed, but I think we all know where it came from, don’t we? Although I generally think it wise to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to “Never answer an anonymous letter” I was asked to offer my thoughts on this latest collection of lies, and I agreed to do so.
The flier begins with the admonition not to believe “scare tactics.” I suppose that means we can all ignore the rest of the sheet in which Tall Grass residents are told of secret plans to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what and to drive taxes through the roof. If that’s not scare tactics, I don’t know what is.
Why a $13,000,000 addition to Neuqua won’t work.
The author suggests that a Neuqua addition for $13,589,437 is a better idea. To that, I have two responses: First, an addition will cost far more than that; and Second, it won’t solve all of our problems.
The architects, at the Board’s request last year, estimated that the cost of a 600 seat classroom addition would cost at least $13,500,000. Note that there are three key caveats there: “Last year” “600” and “classroom.” The “last year” element alone means greater costs. Consider that the cost of the building materials for the high school are up more than $8.6 million in just one year (which, given the building boom in Asia and along the Gulf Coast makes sense). Proportionately, that translates to several million more than the estimate by the time we’d be able to start construction. Of course, we’ll also see labor cost increases in the interim as well, which means that the cost will probably be $16 to $18 million on the low side before it could begin.
Next, consider the “600” issue. We already have 9,200 students in grades 2-5. In seven years when they’re all in high school, that’s 800 more students than we have seats for them to use. Beyond the kids who are already here, there’s the issue of 1,000 or so homes yet to be built in the district. Does anyone seriously believe that we will see all of those homes built and that no kids will move in? Some tell me that that it will be filled exclusively with lateral movement from within the District. If that’s true, that still means 1,000 homes available in the district with kids moving in to them.
Returning to the 600 student Neuqua addition, there’s also the problem of more than 200 “seatless” students at Waubonsie, which is also seeing enrollment growth. No addition at Neuqua is going to address that problem. So now we need to look at a Waubonsie addition as well. What the anonymous author isn’t telling his readers is that the architects have also concluded that there’s almost no way left to add on to the main building at Waubonsie. That means adding space to the Freshman building and making Waubonsie in to a full-time, two building campus. Figure another $10 to $15 million to get the addition built. Unfortunately, that kind of addition means students traveling back and forth across Ogden to change classes, and I don’t see any way that the Waubonsie attendance area would support a referendum to do that, and no referendum will pass in this district without support from both sides.
Still on the “600” issue is the middle school space need. The estimate is that building a middle school would cost on the order of $40-45 million.
Now consider the “classroom” issue on the addition: Adding 600 classroom spaces doesn’t make any of the common spaces any bigger – we would still need more library, lunchroom, gym and other elective spaces added in addition to the classroom space. The only way the architects could come up with such spaces was to build a self-contained, stand-alone addition (sort of a mini school), which would house the new classrooms and the necessary ancillary spaces. The added cost of doing so would likely be $20-$25 million on top of the classroom cost. And the only places to put it would be the soccer field, the football field or the baseball fields. The school district has no power to take the park district’s land that is adjacent to the school, and they’ve assured us they have no interest in selling it.
So the much-hyped $13,000,000 addition is, in actuality, at least a $95 million proposition, and it only addresses space needs for the 800 high school students who are already here. Even CFO’s leadership has agreed (at a televised School Board meeting) that 9,200 is a safe number to use for projecting high school enrollment going forward. What if kids do move in to those 1,000 homes? We’ll need even more space, and that means still more money to make those additions larger yet.
And then what do we have? Two monstrous high schools. Isn’t there a reason that not one of our neighbors (indeed, no one else in the state) is building schools that big?
Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that? As one of my neighbors put it recently, “District 203 is 30% smaller than District 204 and they have only two high schools. Why shouldn’t we have a third one?”
There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change
The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what. The argument is that Jeannette and Howie have some agenda to see the option 6 boundaries revisted and the Board has “alluded” to a change for the Peterson area. All hogwash.
Immediately after the decision was made at several school presentations, Jeannette made it clear that the decision was made and she would support the boundaries as decided. For his part, Howie has never stated a preference for option 6; he has only said that option 6 was superior (from a management perspective) to either version of option 5 with a Gombert/Brookdale swap.
The Board has never alluded to a Peterson change. That’s an overblown attempt to read tea leaves that were never there. It stems from a public comment made by a Peterson area resident who argued that there were only two students from the area who would be in high school in 2009 and that they would be going to Waubonsie alone since (she argued) the area was never going to develop. I then asked her (not stated or argued as one newspaper account reported) if it wouldn’t make more sense to take up that question later to see if her assumptions were correct. She argued that doing so wouldn’t make sense and went on to other points. The Board never discussed any changes to boundaries for Peterson – it was purely a question to probe a speaker’s intentions.
So that leaves the question of why the Board isn’t likely to revisit boundaries. As painful and agonizing as the process was for residents, I can assure you that it’s much worse for Board Members. None of us will be in any hurry to do that again. That means that the only way the boundaries are likely to change is if the Board is willing to abandon one of the core tenets of this school district – public involvement in the boundary process – and
simply decides to make the changes by itself. Frankly, if we were going to do that, we would have done so in January rather go through the process we selected. And don’t forget that doing that means that the majority which voted for the selected plan would need to decide to undo that decision. Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider.
Beyond the practical reality lies the idea of simple fairness. We did the boundaries two years earlier than normal because the voters told us that they needed to know the boundaries in order to evaluate their votes. To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
Middle School Boundaries
One thing the anonymous coward wrote is correct: The Board isn’t making any guarantees on middle school boundaries. I think each of Board Member and the Superintendent has now said that they think it is unlikely that Fry would be removed from Scullen. The reason is simple: right now, everyone from Fry walks to Scullen. To change Fry’s middle school is to incur bus costs that we do not have now, and to do so permanently. The fact that doing so doesn’t make sense is, I think, why everyone has made such a comment.
I think the only reason it hasn’t been phrased as a guarantee is that the Board hasn’t had time to delve in to the issue, and it’s simply unfair to give a guarantee to one area alone.
Taxes Can’t Go Up More Than You’ve Been Told.
The sole question asked on the ballot seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill.
What the flier author seems to be arguing is that having a third high school will mean that the 2009 referendum will need to be larger. Specifically, the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019. Doing all of that in just a few short days is either terribly impressive or riddled with errors. With the need to tell the future required to do it correctly, my money is on the latter, not the former.
The district has, with much care and analysis, determined that the incremental cost of a third high school is $4.5 million. That’s the cost of things like the administrative staff, the utility bills, the nurse, the librarian, and the cost of other things unique to the building like the extra curricular and athletic programs. Key point: Teacher cost is not unique to the building – we will incur those costs whether we build a third high school or not. The residents of this district simply won’t agree to have high school classes at 50 or 60 students, and the teaching staff can’t be required to work both shifts in a split shift. That means that as the number of students in the high schools rises, our hiring of high school teachers will also rise.
The $4.5 million operating cost of a new high school would mean $80 or so per year to the owner of a $300,000 home. Where the Tax Alliance came up with its $15 million figure is anyone’s guess, but it’s $10 million more than is needed to use a third high school in this district.
Speaking of the vaunted Will-DuPage Taxpayers Alliance, you should know what it’s all about. It’s a small group of people aligned with CRAFT, a McHenry County organization whose sole purpose is to defeat any and every school referendum. To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
What does a NO vote give us?
First and foremost, it ends the discussion of a third high school. It will not, as some have suggested, give us more time to find a better site or redo the boundaries. The Board has been clear that this is our last effort to build a third high school. Why? Because the need for middle school space will no longer permit us any further delay. The current proposal recaptures the Waubonsie Gold campus and turns it back in to a middle school, which is how the middle school need gets addressed. A “NO” vote means that we’ll probably come back immediately with a referendum to build a middle school on the land we acquired with 2001 referendum money. Building that school ends the pursuit of a third high school, since it would no longer be possible to build a 3,000 student building and it is unlikely the voters would ever approve building a 1,800 student high school that, because of its smaller enrollment, would offer fewer amenities (programs, sports teams, clubs) than Waubonsie and Neuqua.
A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009. There simply won’t be room to do anything else without adding more space. That’s not scare tactics; it’s simply reality – a scary reality.
One side in this debate has made no bones about who it is: the members of the Board of Education are publicly known, our telephone numbers are public and regularly printed in the newspaper and our email addresses available at a click from the District web site. The same thing is true for the administrators and the leadership structure of the “204 The Kids” group. Every ad is signed, every email is from a person you can contact.
The opposition has continued to remain in the shadows from which they can safely take unfounded shots at people trying to make a difference and deny responsibility for the increasingly negative and banal tactics they use. What they hope for is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (an old IBM marketing strategy) that will lead to a NO vote.
Do you want to believe those who stand up and are willing to be accountable for their words and actions or those who sling mud and spread lies from a perch of anonymity? I hope for the sake of this community, our children and our property values we make the right choice. My vote will be YES, and I encourage you to do so as well."
Mark Metzger [e-mail]

Yes, this has all just turned out so well...

Lacy,
Thank you for posting this and reminding us of just how badly this community was manipulated!

What the board did by changing the site AFTER the vote was not illegal but it was morally wrong. I will always believe that and I think most voters (whether happy or unhappy with current site of MV) deep down know that too.

eta: to clairify...most voters with a conscious know deep down that what the board did was morally wrong. I do not include Steckdad as one with a conscious.

[doctorwho]

Mar 8, 2010 10:32:39 GMT -6 lacy said:

Mar 8, 2010 9:44:34 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

I like this board...thanks

Yes, you seem about as happy as MM was when he wrote this back in 2006. In order for the district to pursue their agenda, it's important to squelch any opposition - even factual and reasonable questions and concerns must be attacked as if they could only come from some lunatic fringe.

"I awoke this morning both surprised and relieved that for the first time in many years, opponents of whatever the school district is currently attempting to do had not engaged in their favorite pastime of the past: the Sunday morning anonymous smear piece. I thought we’d made progress as a community, but I was mistaken. The smear piece arrived today instead, although it appears to be unique to Tall Grass.
True to form, it’s unsigned and unattributed, but I think we all know where it came from, don’t we? Although I generally think it wise to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to “Never answer an anonymous letter” I was asked to offer my thoughts on this latest collection of lies, and I agreed to do so.
The flier begins with the admonition not to believe “scare tactics.” I suppose that means we can all ignore the rest of the sheet in which Tall Grass residents are told of secret plans to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what and to drive taxes through the roof. If that’s not scare tactics, I don’t know what is.
Why a $13,000,000 addition to Neuqua won’t work.
The author suggests that a Neuqua addition for $13,589,437 is a better idea. To that, I have two responses: First, an addition will cost far more than that; and Second, it won’t solve all of our problems.
The architects, at the Board’s request last year, estimated that the cost of a 600 seat classroom addition would cost at least $13,500,000. Note that there are three key caveats there: “Last year” “600” and “classroom.” The “last year” element alone means greater costs. Consider that the cost of the building materials for the high school are up more than $8.6 million in just one year (which, given the building boom in Asia and along the Gulf Coast makes sense). Proportionately, that translates to several million more than the estimate by the time we’d be able to start construction. Of course, we’ll also see labor cost increases in the interim as well, which means that the cost will probably be $16 to $18 million on the low side before it could begin.
Next, consider the “600” issue. We already have 9,200 students in grades 2-5. In seven years when they’re all in high school, that’s 800 more students than we have seats for them to use. Beyond the kids who are already here, there’s the issue of 1,000 or so homes yet to be built in the district. Does anyone seriously believe that we will see all of those homes built and that no kids will move in? Some tell me that that it will be filled exclusively with lateral movement from within the District. If that’s true, that still means 1,000 homes available in the district with kids moving in to them.
Returning to the 600 student Neuqua addition, there’s also the problem of more than 200 “seatless” students at Waubonsie, which is also seeing enrollment growth. No addition at Neuqua is going to address that problem. So now we need to look at a Waubonsie addition as well. What the anonymous author isn’t telling his readers is that the architects have also concluded that there’s almost no way left to add on to the main building at Waubonsie. That means adding space to the Freshman building and making Waubonsie in to a full-time, two building campus. Figure another $10 to $15 million to get the addition built. Unfortunately, that kind of addition means students traveling back and forth across Ogden to change classes, and I don’t see any way that the Waubonsie attendance area would support a referendum to do that, and no referendum will pass in this district without support from both sides.
Still on the “600” issue is the middle school space need. The estimate is that building a middle school would cost on the order of $40-45 million.
Now consider the “classroom” issue on the addition: Adding 600 classroom spaces doesn’t make any of the common spaces any bigger – we would still need more library, lunchroom, gym and other elective spaces added in addition to the classroom space. The only way the architects could come up with such spaces was to build a self-contained, stand-alone addition (sort of a mini school), which would house the new classrooms and the necessary ancillary spaces. The added cost of doing so would likely be $20-$25 million on top of the classroom cost. And the only places to put it would be the soccer field, the football field or the baseball fields. The school district has no power to take the park district’s land that is adjacent to the school, and they’ve assured us they have no interest in selling it.
So the much-hyped $13,000,000 addition is, in actuality, at least a $95 million proposition, and it only addresses space needs for the 800 high school students who are already here. Even CFO’s leadership has agreed (at a televised School Board meeting) that 9,200 is a safe number to use for projecting high school enrollment going forward. What if kids do move in to those 1,000 homes? We’ll need even more space, and that means still more money to make those additions larger yet.
And then what do we have? Two monstrous high schools. Isn’t there a reason that not one of our neighbors (indeed, no one else in the state) is building schools that big?
Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that? As one of my neighbors put it recently, “District 203 is 30% smaller than District 204 and they have only two high schools. Why shouldn’t we have a third one?”
There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change
The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what. The argument is that Jeannette and Howie have some agenda to see the option 6 boundaries revisted and the Board has “alluded” to a change for the Peterson area. All hogwash.
Immediately after the decision was made at several school presentations, Jeannette made it clear that the decision was made and she would support the boundaries as decided. For his part, Howie has never stated a preference for option 6; he has only said that option 6 was superior (from a management perspective) to either version of option 5 with a Gombert/Brookdale swap.
The Board has never alluded to a Peterson change. That’s an overblown attempt to read tea leaves that were never there. It stems from a public comment made by a Peterson area resident who argued that there were only two students from the area who would be in high school in 2009 and that they would be going to Waubonsie alone since (she argued) the area was never going to develop. I then asked her (not stated or argued as one newspaper account reported) if it wouldn’t make more sense to take up that question later to see if her assumptions were correct. She argued that doing so wouldn’t make sense and went on to other points. The Board never discussed any changes to boundaries for Peterson – it was purely a question to probe a speaker’s intentions.
So that leaves the question of why the Board isn’t likely to revisit boundaries. As painful and agonizing as the process was for residents, I can assure you that it’s much worse for Board Members. None of us will be in any hurry to do that again. That means that the only way the boundaries are likely to change is if the Board is willing to abandon one of the core tenets of this school district – public involvement in the boundary process – and
simply decides to make the changes by itself. Frankly, if we were going to do that, we would have done so in January rather go through the process we selected. And don’t forget that doing that means that the majority which voted for the selected plan would need to decide to undo that decision. Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider.
Beyond the practical reality lies the idea of simple fairness. We did the boundaries two years earlier than normal because the voters told us that they needed to know the boundaries in order to evaluate their votes. To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
Middle School Boundaries
One thing the anonymous coward wrote is correct: The Board isn’t making any guarantees on middle school boundaries. I think each of Board Member and the Superintendent has now said that they think it is unlikely that Fry would be removed from Scullen. The reason is simple: right now, everyone from Fry walks to Scullen. To change Fry’s middle school is to incur bus costs that we do not have now, and to do so permanently. The fact that doing so doesn’t make sense is, I think, why everyone has made such a comment.
I think the only reason it hasn’t been phrased as a guarantee is that the Board hasn’t had time to delve in to the issue, and it’s simply unfair to give a guarantee to one area alone.
Taxes Can’t Go Up More Than You’ve Been Told.
The sole question asked on the ballot seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill.
What the flier author seems to be arguing is that having a third high school will mean that the 2009 referendum will need to be larger. Specifically, the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019. Doing all of that in just a few short days is either terribly impressive or riddled with errors. With the need to tell the future required to do it correctly, my money is on the latter, not the former.
The district has, with much care and analysis, determined that the incremental cost of a third high school is $4.5 million. That’s the cost of things like the administrative staff, the utility bills, the nurse, the librarian, and the cost of other things unique to the building like the extra curricular and athletic programs. Key point: Teacher cost is not unique to the building – we will incur those costs whether we build a third high school or not. The residents of this district simply won’t agree to have high school classes at 50 or 60 students, and the teaching staff can’t be required to work both shifts in a split shift. That means that as the number of students in the high schools rises, our hiring of high school teachers will also rise.
The $4.5 million operating cost of a new high school would mean $80 or so per year to the owner of a $300,000 home. Where the Tax Alliance came up with its $15 million figure is anyone’s guess, but it’s $10 million more than is needed to use a third high school in this district.
Speaking of the vaunted Will-DuPage Taxpayers Alliance, you should know what it’s all about. It’s a small group of people aligned with CRAFT, a McHenry County organization whose sole purpose is to defeat any and every school referendum. To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
What does a NO vote give us?
First and foremost, it ends the discussion of a third high school. It will not, as some have suggested, give us more time to find a better site or redo the boundaries. The Board has been clear that this is our last effort to build a third high school. Why? Because the need for middle school space will no longer permit us any further delay. The current proposal recaptures the Waubonsie Gold campus and turns it back in to a middle school, which is how the middle school need gets addressed. A “NO” vote means that we’ll probably come back immediately with a referendum to build a middle school on the land we acquired with 2001 referendum money. Building that school ends the pursuit of a third high school, since it would no longer be possible to build a 3,000 student building and it is unlikely the voters would ever approve building a 1,800 student high school that, because of its smaller enrollment, would offer fewer amenities (programs, sports teams, clubs) than Waubonsie and Neuqua.
A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009. There simply won’t be room to do anything else without adding more space. That’s not scare tactics; it’s simply reality – a scary reality.
One side in this debate has made no bones about who it is: the members of the Board of Education are publicly known, our telephone numbers are public and regularly printed in the newspaper and our email addresses available at a click from the District web site. The same thing is true for the administrators and the leadership structure of the “204 The Kids” group. Every ad is signed, every email is from a person you can contact.
The opposition has continued to remain in the shadows from which they can safely take unfounded shots at people trying to make a difference and deny responsibility for the increasingly negative and banal tactics they use. What they hope for is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (an old IBM marketing strategy) that will lead to a NO vote.
Do you want to believe those who stand up and are willing to be accountable for their words and actions or those who sling mud and spread lies from a perch of anonymity? I hope for the sake of this community, our children and our property values we make the right choice. My vote will be YES, and I encourage you to do so as well."
Mark Metzger [e-mail]

Yes, this has all just turned out so well...

my God, did he get anything right in here ? Could he have been more wrong, or just deceitful on what was going to happen?

"Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that?"

well for one we paid for freshman centers already based on 9000 students. So truth told we would have 2 high schools @ 2000 each with 1000 freshman centers, and a 3rd HS with 2400 by not counting the 600 seats he conveniently left out @ Frontier campus. I guess math not one of the strong suits. Oh and 5 years from now 8900 becomes 8400.

" To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
"

Gee how'd that work out Mark !!! what bullshit

" the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019"

gee name calling ( mulitple times in this diatribe)- what a surprise then again who turned out to be right here again? woefully misinformed or liar- you decide



"seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill."

Lies again - likely less- how about $25M more ? And the actual cost to the taxpayers again what was being hidden was the $17M to secure the bond rates - where is that here ? hat doesn't ahve an effect on out taxes- really ?



"There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change"

wrong again professor

The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what

um, how'd that work out - who was right again here ?


A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009

again bullshit and scare tactics-- this wasn't even close to needed - ever

" To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
"

again, who was spot on and whose statements turned out to be total crap ?

" Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider."

hmmm, where have I heard this statement recently ?

[doctorwho]

Mar 8, 2010 10:55:30 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Mar 8, 2010 10:32:39 GMT -6 lacy said:

Yes, you seem about as happy as MM was when he wrote this back in 2006. In order for the district to pursue their agenda, it's important to squelch any opposition - even factual and reasonable questions and concerns must be attacked as if they could only come from some lunatic fringe.

"I awoke this morning both surprised and relieved that for the first time in many years, opponents of whatever the school district is currently attempting to do had not engaged in their favorite pastime of the past: the Sunday morning anonymous smear piece. I thought we’d made progress as a community, but I was mistaken. The smear piece arrived today instead, although it appears to be unique to Tall Grass.
True to form, it’s unsigned and unattributed, but I think we all know where it came from, don’t we? Although I generally think it wise to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to “Never answer an anonymous letter” I was asked to offer my thoughts on this latest collection of lies, and I agreed to do so.
The flier begins with the admonition not to believe “scare tactics.” I suppose that means we can all ignore the rest of the sheet in which Tall Grass residents are told of secret plans to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what and to drive taxes through the roof. If that’s not scare tactics, I don’t know what is.
Why a $13,000,000 addition to Neuqua won’t work.
The author suggests that a Neuqua addition for $13,589,437 is a better idea. To that, I have two responses: First, an addition will cost far more than that; and Second, it won’t solve all of our problems.
The architects, at the Board’s request last year, estimated that the cost of a 600 seat classroom addition would cost at least $13,500,000. Note that there are three key caveats there: “Last year” “600” and “classroom.” The “last year” element alone means greater costs. Consider that the cost of the building materials for the high school are up more than $8.6 million in just one year (which, given the building boom in Asia and along the Gulf Coast makes sense). Proportionately, that translates to several million more than the estimate by the time we’d be able to start construction. Of course, we’ll also see labor cost increases in the interim as well, which means that the cost will probably be $16 to $18 million on the low side before it could begin.
Next, consider the “600” issue. We already have 9,200 students in grades 2-5. In seven years when they’re all in high school, that’s 800 more students than we have seats for them to use. Beyond the kids who are already here, there’s the issue of 1,000 or so homes yet to be built in the district. Does anyone seriously believe that we will see all of those homes built and that no kids will move in? Some tell me that that it will be filled exclusively with lateral movement from within the District. If that’s true, that still means 1,000 homes available in the district with kids moving in to them.
Returning to the 600 student Neuqua addition, there’s also the problem of more than 200 “seatless” students at Waubonsie, which is also seeing enrollment growth. No addition at Neuqua is going to address that problem. So now we need to look at a Waubonsie addition as well. What the anonymous author isn’t telling his readers is that the architects have also concluded that there’s almost no way left to add on to the main building at Waubonsie. That means adding space to the Freshman building and making Waubonsie in to a full-time, two building campus. Figure another $10 to $15 million to get the addition built. Unfortunately, that kind of addition means students traveling back and forth across Ogden to change classes, and I don’t see any way that the Waubonsie attendance area would support a referendum to do that, and no referendum will pass in this district without support from both sides.
Still on the “600” issue is the middle school space need. The estimate is that building a middle school would cost on the order of $40-45 million.
Now consider the “classroom” issue on the addition: Adding 600 classroom spaces doesn’t make any of the common spaces any bigger – we would still need more library, lunchroom, gym and other elective spaces added in addition to the classroom space. The only way the architects could come up with such spaces was to build a self-contained, stand-alone addition (sort of a mini school), which would house the new classrooms and the necessary ancillary spaces. The added cost of doing so would likely be $20-$25 million on top of the classroom cost. And the only places to put it would be the soccer field, the football field or the baseball fields. The school district has no power to take the park district’s land that is adjacent to the school, and they’ve assured us they have no interest in selling it.
So the much-hyped $13,000,000 addition is, in actuality, at least a $95 million proposition, and it only addresses space needs for the 800 high school students who are already here. Even CFO’s leadership has agreed (at a televised School Board meeting) that 9,200 is a safe number to use for projecting high school enrollment going forward. What if kids do move in to those 1,000 homes? We’ll need even more space, and that means still more money to make those additions larger yet.
And then what do we have? Two monstrous high schools. Isn’t there a reason that not one of our neighbors (indeed, no one else in the state) is building schools that big?
Compare that to a new 3,000 student high school. Even if the opposition is right and 9,200 high school students is all that we ever get, we’ll have three high schools, each with 3,000 or so students – what’s wrong with that? As one of my neighbors put it recently, “District 203 is 30% smaller than District 204 and they have only two high schools. Why shouldn’t we have a third one?”
There is No Real Risk of a Further Boundary Change
The flier author argues that there is a secret plan to send Fry to Waubonsie no matter what. The argument is that Jeannette and Howie have some agenda to see the option 6 boundaries revisted and the Board has “alluded” to a change for the Peterson area. All hogwash.
Immediately after the decision was made at several school presentations, Jeannette made it clear that the decision was made and she would support the boundaries as decided. For his part, Howie has never stated a preference for option 6; he has only said that option 6 was superior (from a management perspective) to either version of option 5 with a Gombert/Brookdale swap.
The Board has never alluded to a Peterson change. That’s an overblown attempt to read tea leaves that were never there. It stems from a public comment made by a Peterson area resident who argued that there were only two students from the area who would be in high school in 2009 and that they would be going to Waubonsie alone since (she argued) the area was never going to develop. I then asked her (not stated or argued as one newspaper account reported) if it wouldn’t make more sense to take up that question later to see if her assumptions were correct. She argued that doing so wouldn’t make sense and went on to other points. The Board never discussed any changes to boundaries for Peterson – it was purely a question to probe a speaker’s intentions.
So that leaves the question of why the Board isn’t likely to revisit boundaries. As painful and agonizing as the process was for residents, I can assure you that it’s much worse for Board Members. None of us will be in any hurry to do that again. That means that the only way the boundaries are likely to change is if the Board is willing to abandon one of the core tenets of this school district – public involvement in the boundary process – and
simply decides to make the changes by itself. Frankly, if we were going to do that, we would have done so in January rather go through the process we selected. And don’t forget that doing that means that the majority which voted for the selected plan would need to decide to undo that decision. Someone on the losing side of a motion can’t move to reconsider.
Beyond the practical reality lies the idea of simple fairness. We did the boundaries two years earlier than normal because the voters told us that they needed to know the boundaries in order to evaluate their votes. To change the boundaries after the vote smacks of a bait and switch and is just simply unfair, which is yet another reason I don’t think it’s likely to happen.
Middle School Boundaries
One thing the anonymous coward wrote is correct: The Board isn’t making any guarantees on middle school boundaries. I think each of Board Member and the Superintendent has now said that they think it is unlikely that Fry would be removed from Scullen. The reason is simple: right now, everyone from Fry walks to Scullen. To change Fry’s middle school is to incur bus costs that we do not have now, and to do so permanently. The fact that doing so doesn’t make sense is, I think, why everyone has made such a comment.
I think the only reason it hasn’t been phrased as a guarantee is that the Board hasn’t had time to delve in to the issue, and it’s simply unfair to give a guarantee to one area alone.
Taxes Can’t Go Up More Than You’ve Been Told.
The sole question asked on the ballot seeks permission to issue bonds in the amount $124,660,000. We’ve made very conservative projections of the actual cost to taxpayers, so it’s very likely that the cost will actually be less than projected. In any event, the referendum only approves the cost of building and equipping the school – it will have no effect on the rest of your tax bill.
What the flier author seems to be arguing is that having a third high school will mean that the 2009 referendum will need to be larger. Specifically, the rocket scientists at the Will-DuPage Tax Alliance supposedly have figured out what the 2009 referendum request will be. Personally, I’m very impressed, because getting to that number means knowing the rate of inflation for 2006, 2007 and 2008; knowing the EAV growth for the school district for those same years; knowing what the state will do with school funding for each of the next three years; knowing what the current and the next teachers’ contract will look like and cost and then projecting all of that out to 2019. Doing all of that in just a few short days is either terribly impressive or riddled with errors. With the need to tell the future required to do it correctly, my money is on the latter, not the former.
The district has, with much care and analysis, determined that the incremental cost of a third high school is $4.5 million. That’s the cost of things like the administrative staff, the utility bills, the nurse, the librarian, and the cost of other things unique to the building like the extra curricular and athletic programs. Key point: Teacher cost is not unique to the building – we will incur those costs whether we build a third high school or not. The residents of this district simply won’t agree to have high school classes at 50 or 60 students, and the teaching staff can’t be required to work both shifts in a split shift. That means that as the number of students in the high schools rises, our hiring of high school teachers will also rise.
The $4.5 million operating cost of a new high school would mean $80 or so per year to the owner of a $300,000 home. Where the Tax Alliance came up with its $15 million figure is anyone’s guess, but it’s $10 million more than is needed to use a third high school in this district.
Speaking of the vaunted Will-DuPage Taxpayers Alliance, you should know what it’s all about. It’s a small group of people aligned with CRAFT, a McHenry County organization whose sole purpose is to defeat any and every school referendum. To that group, there is no such thing a necessary referendum. Do we really want to listen to a group that’s already made up its mind on every referendum without even looking at the facts?
What does a NO vote give us?
First and foremost, it ends the discussion of a third high school. It will not, as some have suggested, give us more time to find a better site or redo the boundaries. The Board has been clear that this is our last effort to build a third high school. Why? Because the need for middle school space will no longer permit us any further delay. The current proposal recaptures the Waubonsie Gold campus and turns it back in to a middle school, which is how the middle school need gets addressed. A “NO” vote means that we’ll probably come back immediately with a referendum to build a middle school on the land we acquired with 2001 referendum money. Building that school ends the pursuit of a third high school, since it would no longer be possible to build a 3,000 student building and it is unlikely the voters would ever approve building a 1,800 student high school that, because of its smaller enrollment, would offer fewer amenities (programs, sports teams, clubs) than Waubonsie and Neuqua.
A “NO” vote forces us to have split shifts if we do not add more space before 2009. There simply won’t be room to do anything else without adding more space. That’s not scare tactics; it’s simply reality – a scary reality.
One side in this debate has made no bones about who it is: the members of the Board of Education are publicly known, our telephone numbers are public and regularly printed in the newspaper and our email addresses available at a click from the District web site. The same thing is true for the administrators and the leadership structure of the “204 The Kids” group. Every ad is signed, every email is from a person you can contact.
The opposition has continued to remain in the shadows from which they can safely take unfounded shots at people trying to make a difference and deny responsibility for the increasingly negative and banal tactics they use. What they hope for is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (an old IBM marketing strategy) that will lead to a NO vote.
Do you want to believe those who stand up and are willing to be accountable for their words and actions or those who sling mud and spread lies from a perch of anonymity? I hope for the sake of this community, our children and our property values we make the right choice. My vote will be YES, and I encourage you to do so as well."
Mark Metzger [e-mail]

Yes, this has all just turned out so well...

what's the problem? sounds like he was being up front with the costs as well as the likelihood of 8900 students.

boundaries had to change with the site change. This reads like there was a strong backlash from TG on the chance they would attend WV.....

upfront with the costs how ? Where the $17M extra for bond rates - who'd he tell that to ? Where are the expedite charge costs ? People here would still assume $124M - or likely less he says- not the $150M we forked over. Upfront and honest by what definition ?

Yes he KNEW the population numbers he had were sh!t - yet he still says 'even if' - and repeats the bullcrap mantra bout split shifts which were based on 10,400 + -- when he knew that was no longer true. But then why give up a good scare tactic. Even after he knew he kept that nonsense up.

Did Tallgrass proceed to march upon the HC center en masse led by a school board president over being assigned to WVHS ?

[macrockett]

Mar 8, 2010 9:50:30 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Mar 8, 2010 8:22:50 GMT -6 macrockett said:

I have highlighted 4 statements/paragraphs steckdad. Let me respond to each. Lets start with the last. "I just don't see the outcry"

This board wasn't created for you. It was created to provide information. To create some transparency for the community. To provide facts that others won't.

Second, it seems like a fair number of people on this board are going beyond "if things had gone as planned" to ask why they were done at all, what was the due diligence done by our Board and the Administration, etc. The last decade of "planning" appears, imo, to be ad hoc at best.

Third, "... all things 204 are evil or twisted to look that way..." Forget Doc for a moment and tell me what, if anything, I have said on this board that is "evil or twisted to look that way".

That is an accusation involving every one on this board, as your subject is "the outcry on this board." So tell me, steckdad, what have I declared evil? What have I twisted? Beyond that, what has anyone declared "evil or twisted to look that way"?

Have to finish later...

you do a great job getting that info out there Mac...you got all your ducks in a row....I think you would have been a fine addition to the SB. I am not sure how you only managed a few more votes than a guy who could barely speak english. (not a slam on the guy because I know he is very intelligent)

IMO you think you have a smoking gun and I think you do not. this is where we differ.

I will assume then, you aren't accusing anyone on this board of "altering or distorting the facts they have presented here."

As to a "smoking gun," I have no idea where that came from. If I thought there was some legal issue that was actionable I would certainly act on it. Which is exactly what I did in supporting the law suit against the District.

Equitable estoppel (detrimental reliance) is a valid legal argument as you know, or should know stepdad. At the trial level, the Court ruled that the District's actions did not rise to the level of satisfying the elements of the claim. Nothing more, nothing less. Had the plaintiffs chosen to appeal, they may or may not have been successful.

What I do believe, as I have stated in virtually everything I have written (or spoken about at SB forums or at SB meeting) is that community resources are finite. If you don't use those resources wisely, you will eventually impair the only real goal our District should have, which is educating (and providing opportunities for) our children and preparing them for the future in a safe environment.

In other words, if it isn't absolutely necessary to satisfy that goal, justify the expense, support your rationale for spending the money. Then let the community decide.

I have heard several times about the size of NV, 4500, as you bring up above. First the main campus is not 4500, it is divided between main (3000) and freshmen (1200).

Second, I have heard arguments that the schools are over crowded and we needed more space. Perhaps so, but where was the due diligence? Where is the definitive information that shows what additional capacity we needed and why we needed a third HS v what the community said it preferred.
In addition, I have heard several times about a "large" facilities (like Lane Tech in Chicago) being detrimental to education, yet I see no facts to support that claim. In searching on the internet I thought I would find a large body of work to support the claim. I didn't. On the surface, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, as right after high school many people go on to attend college where class sizes and campuses are, in some cases, much larger.

Finally, your statement above dealing with the size is directly contradicted by the facts. In the only definitive case that I am aware of, where the community was allowed to express an opinion, the 2005 survey, the statistical sample overwhelmingly said they preferred adding on to existing buildings. I see nothing to the contrary.

I didn't participate in the 2005 vote, nor the 2006 vote in any way shape or form. I wish I had. My involvement began in wondering why we were putting a HS where so few kids resided and on land that the School Board had just recently rejected (my facts came from reading the paper.)

From there, I collected information. I didn't rely on anyone's opinion whatsoever. I have information collected from about 50 different FOIAs that encompasses about 80-100 separate pieces of information, and from going to the county to review the tax records. I also asked Doc and Arch about documentation for their claims, which they provided (they each have a "vault of documents"). In total I estimate I spend in excess of 1000 hours forming and documenting my conclusions.

I do understand the law, as a licensed attorney, and the financial information as a CPA. I stand by whatever I have said on this Board and the representations made by Doc and Arch and many others here. I see no motive other than to present the facts and motivate others to educate themselves about the facts. It is about my children and those to come that I am concerned about, nothing else.

As to the election, I pulled out well in advance of the vote to support 4 other candidates who, I believed, had financial sense and could see what I had concluded.

You have your opinion steckdad, I understand that. The issue I have is you don't support it with facts. Imo, based on current trends, there will be financial pressure put on this community. The growth, in material terms, is over. Our District will have to rely on inflation or continuous referendums to keep the train on the track. Beyond that, there are a number of outside forces that will also affect our community. I have posted my facts and conclusions on this board for all to see.

[doctorwho]

Stevenson and New Trier , two of the absolute best public schools in the state, blow up completely the nonsense that some a larger high school is deterimental- in fact most there love their schools and the multi opportunities size affords them.

[macrockett]

Mar 8, 2010 10:47:05 GMT -6 brant said:

Mar 8, 2010 9:50:30 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

you do a great job getting that info out there Mac...you got all your ducks in a row....I think you would have been a fine addition to the SB. I am not sure how you only managed a few more votes than a guy who could barely speak english. (not a slam on the guy because I know he is very intelligent)

IMO you think you have a smoking gun and I think you do not. this is where we differ.

Please remember Mac dropped out of the race several weeks before the election. Had he stayed in I am sure he would have been right up there.

Thanks brant.

[brant]

Mar 8, 2010 11:23:43 GMT -6 doctorwho said:

Stevenson and New Trier , two of the absolute best public schools in the state, blow up completely the nonsense that some a larger high school is deterimental- in fact most there love their schools and the multi opportunities size affords them.

Ah but those schools are run flawlessly by SBs who understand business and don't play games. The SBs at NT and Stevenson are trusted to do the right things to keep their schools high rankings and
are highly respected by the public. They don't have PTA presidents and idiots like JC. MM wouldn't have lasted one term up there.

[Arch]

Mar 8, 2010 9:43:24 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

because I have lived in the area for 18 years I can make that opinion arch. Not a travesty. Not having access to a quality education is a travesty. Having to make an uncomfortable drive to get to HS is far from one.

It is funny to me how your area of expertise has changed from pipelines to commercial construction I want you to have your opinion, but I went to the open house and a basketball game there and I think you are way off base imo. I haven't been in the auditorium yet so I can't comment.

I apparently know more than you do if you can't find the flaws in the building. Let's meet up there sometime and I will point them out to you. Working and building out 7 very large data centers in 3 states from the planning phase all the way to turn up obviously doesn't teach anyone anything about dealing with contractors, electrical, climate control, hardened security, fire suppression, etc.

Whether you went to the open house or not doesn't change the fact that it's an expensive price tag for cheap materials and even cheaper construction quality. It's new, but it's cheaply built and the rush job is very apparent. That alone is a travesty to the taxpayers. They paid a Ferrari price and wound up with a Ford Festiva with a spoiler and a shiny flow-thru muffler.

A simple itemized price list of everything for MVHS would show either you are wrong or I am wrong. I'd be happy if you could make me eat crow on this one.

As for the auditorium, just to give you a specific: some of the runners/wings on the sides are broken in functionality before the first show and are not functional for what they are supposed to do so the audience will easily be able to see people waiting off stage during the performance this Friday/Saturday.

Like I said: Cheap goods, cheap workmanship.

[refbasics]

Mar 7, 2010 10:23:39 GMT -6 doctorwho said:

Mar 7, 2010 1:22:10 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

Doc....You post the same things over and over again here on this board for what? hoping it will make a difference or someone will read it and spring to action?

sounds similar to me......

and more and more people are waking up the plight of a school district that CAN be accomplished through communication, over the acknowledged apathy. Also I publish facts- whether you like them or not doesn't matter. WE spent almost $150M on a HS - people need to know that, the SD lied to us on populaton figures and then when they had the correct ones suppressed them from the public - did bullshit diliogence on boundaries as proven by what was received from FOIA. Knowing this will fix the situation at the polling booth next time.--
Can money be made to appear from thin air by 'communication'
If you think so then there is a place in Obama's cabinet for you. What the hell exactly were the banners supposed to accomplish ? Please explain that to me...asthe state is broke- period.
The goofs here built their business model to rely more and more on state matching funds when some people told them not to-- not every school district in the state did what we did, not everyone is in such dire straits because their SD & SB weasn't trying to play the schemes to get what they wanted.

-----------------------------------
the banners were to tell everybody how badly the big, bad state was 'treating' the SD.......oh boo hoo ...

the question to be asked is why was this not anticipated by the school district and acted on accordingly!

[macrockett]

Mar 8, 2010 9:34:46 GMT -6 @steckdad said:

You keep saying they knew the truth, but not before the ref. was ok'd (this is the most important fact to me) but it doesn't look like that to me.

Why is knowing it before or after the referendum even relevant steckdad?

It seems to me that years had gone by from the "conclusion" (i use that word loosely mind you) to build a third HS.

Imo, it seems rationale that should you learn at any point before you purchase land and break ground, or even after for that matter, that material facts upon which you base conclusions don't pan out, or are no longer supported by facts or reasonable assumptions, you stop to reassess your plan.

Would there have been dire consequences in doing so? You would have thought so based on the rant of JC in the Feb 08 school board meeting (there or the April meeting). How she insisted we need the space and we needed it yesterday...

The facts, imo, don't support her representations (or 6-7 on the Board). Had we stopped and reassessed, at most, for the 09-10 school year we would have needed a little over two hundred additional seats, at most (I am trying to be generous here), to get us through till 2010 (about the same amount that Scullen had been "over crowded" for the past 3-4 years with the two mobiles (1200 capacity and 1450 in attendance).

There is no law that says a School Board can't change it's mind if facts come to light that materially affect the conclusions previously reached. If they can put a HS up in that space of time (spring to fall), certainly they can put mobiles up, if necessary, to accommodate another year.

Imo either the process broke down or some people (on the School Board) didn't want to stop. Either way, the community pays the price.

[macrockett]

Sorry to interrupt this thread, as it is a hot item today, but please look at the post I just put up under: Off topic :: Warning: The Deficits Are Coming!