It took two years for a board member to admit that closing a school, in a growing district, is needed to provide land for City High. The board still won’t say how the non-contiguous land will be used. A baseball field, parking lot? This secretive, non-justified, ultimately expensive decision of two years ago is continuing the pattern of building larger, expensive schools on ICCSD edges, often on developer-donated land, increasing busing costs and neglecting eastside neighborhoods. The supposedly community-vetted Facilities Master Plan is, in the view/desire of many board candidates, immutable, even though it has been modified recently for some eastside neighborhood schools, and will be again. The community needs an ICCSD board culture change, replacing poorly-responsive, we-know-what’s-best members, subservient to the administration, who make major decisions with little or no community input. Roosevelt, Hoover; is your neighborhood school next?
I write, as a taxpayer and parent of former Hoover and CHS students, to urge fellow voters to learn the candidates’ positions, especially on blindly following the FMP, despite its considerable costs in closing and demolishing one larger, newer school and replacing it (New Hoover). Your due diligence will lead you to Phil Hemingway, Chris Liebig and Brian Richman, who will provide that needed culture change. Otherwise, I and other citizens may vote against the upcoming bond issue, given our loss of trust.
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