Besides your statement that "District 113 report card is terrible" not being supported by the data, there is no evidence to support your claim that spending money on infrastructure means less focus on education.
-Logic Cop

What, no fax number?

Sorry! I do not use fax any more.

Not really sure what the comparison is supposed to be between the two districts? One has 1.7% of it's students with limited English proficiency the other 0%, One has 15.9% of it's students eligible to receive special eduction servers the other 4.9%, one has an enrolment of 3,744 students the other 102, one is a high school district the other grade school, one has an average class size of 16.9 the other 9. How is one supposed to compensate for these differences when making a comparison?
-Logic Cop

i like logic cop.

Evan my two Mexican sisters grew up in Mexico. My father took them to Cape town South Africa. The languages of the country are English and Africans. The school’s language was German. In three months they learned to communicate in all three languages. Mexicans can learn just like you. Diversity is not bad. They now can communicate in five languages. I only in 2 and 1/2 languages. Evan how many do you speak? The corrupt Illinois School Code prevent Mexicans from learning English in school like other foreigners.

Carl, your logical fallacy is: http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque ("Evan how many do you speak?"), http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question ("The corrupt Illinois School Code prevent Mexicans from learning English ") and http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal ("my two Mexican sisters grew up in Mexico...")

Exactly!

Your correct. Look on page 11 and see. One school passes easily. Our school district fails for 5 years. Yet our district really does nothing to improve. Building parking lots which are not needed is bad judgment and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

I understand what you're saying, Jim. For those who CHOSE not to be involved in this completely open process, I have ZERO sympathy if you whine at this point. (Same for those who took part (wink, wink) but were "disgusted" because a large group would not absolutely follow (ie, they didn't have the skills to build their concensus for) their stomp-my-feet-and-hold-my breath position.)

But I digress. I think the one thing that should be clarified about your message is that a large number of the community did participate. What was the number? Something like 200+ different people on all the committees?

Although I must say, I'm looking forward to what rabbit will be pulled out of the E1st hat tonight. You know the six or seven of them have been planning for this all summer.

Let's hope their plan actually has some solid stats and facts behind it this time, rather than the unsubstantiated garbage they pulled out last time.

Maybe the RNA will show up with their 13 emails in support of E1.

BDB: You realize that Mr. Lambrecht has attended more Board meetings than just about anyone in this Community? As far as someone who's involved - he is.

The point he makes is that spending more money does not equate to a better education. Other Districts that spend less have better results. We can argue about demographics all day long - but the fact is that the Community has been looking for a better plan. A long-range plan that focuses on needs instead of wants. One which will improve the educational quality of the Students.

I've gladly participated in the meetings to help guide a new plan, and look forward to the beginning of the presentations this evening. Mr. Lambrecht has also chimed in as a member of the Public. Have you? Perhaps we'll never know since you choose to use a pseudonym, but I'd like to hope that you have and will continue to do so.

David, please don't start me on a worse note than the usual blah-blah-blah propaganda has already put me. NOWHERE did I even come in the ballpark of saying that Carl has not attended any meetings. So let's try to at least get those facts straight.

I won't even address the cheap attempt to discredit with the - yawwwwwwwwn - pseduonym comment. Try and stay on the topic at hand.

Sue:

There was an election last year and several of the incumbents were re-elected. I believe that it could be said the community believed that the school board was generally representative of them, but did not like the referendum. Why that was case is a matter of discussion.

BTW, there is another election in April where the community may or may not make a change.

Actually, I haven't seen any evidence of a rerun. What I have seen, and participated in, has been a process where everything is being analyzed in detail - unlike the previous referendum (i.e. what we're doing now is what we ought to have done prior to the previous referendum).

The schools do have lots of needs - but there's many options to be reviewed for meeting those needs. In some cases we may be able to repurpose or refurbish something we have already to meet the need (saves money, still accomplishes the educational purposes), and in others it's going to be more cost effective from an investment standpoint to simply build new.

How we get there will be the big question, and that's why a Master Plan is being developed. So we can focus on the most pressing needs first, but know where we're going next and plan accordingly. We won't know where the money needs to come from until we have cost estimates - it could be a referendum (of currently unknown amount), using existing budgetary dollars, or some combination thereof.

Right now there's a lot of options that have been generated and which are being looked at - which is precisely what we asked the architects and cost managers to do. Next month we ought to have some numbers to chew on...