Ohio’s Committee of 10 hires a lawyer
OHIO — The Committee of 10 has hired a lawyer in its efforts to deal with Ohio High School’s administration and board.
In August, 10 Ohio High School District residents formed the Committee of 10 in an attempt to bring the future of the district to voters. After speaking with Princeton High School
Superintendent Kirk Haring Sept. 2, the committee announced plans to collect signatures to put the question as to whether Ohio should annex into the Princeton district.
At Monday’s school board meeting, committee member Deb Anderson read a letter from attorney Michael Tibbs, of the Peoria law firm Miller, Hall and Triggs.
Tibbs discussed the enrollment, which is now about 40 to 45 students, and said because of its small size, the high school offers an educational experience characterized by “significant limitations.” He said the pupils have limited educational opportunities, and the teaching staff cannot overcome the limitations imposed by the “narrow curriculum” offered. He also said students have fewer opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities.
“Given the current number of pupils and the virtual certainty of further declines in that number, the existing situation at the high school cannot improve and will likely deteriorate,” he wrote.
Tibbs said the board is not responsible for demographic trends that are affecting small communities throughout Illinois and other parts of the country.
“However, you are responsible for the official response of the district to those trends. Thus far, that response has been largely characterized by inaction and delay,” he wrote.
Tibbs said on behalf of his clients, he was asking the board to “act immediately to provide high school students in the Ohio community with the opportunity to attend classes at Princeton Township High School,” effective with the beginning of the 2010-11 school year.
While the board considers the future of the high school, Tibbs said he is preparing a petition to annex to the Princeton High School District.
“Hopefully, the process of preparing and circulating the petition will prove to be a precaution made unnecessary by your own prompt and decisive action to provide high school aged pupils in the community with appropriate alternate educational opportunities,” he wrote. “However, should you fail to act, my clients are firmly committed to a vigorous and sustained effort to annex the district to Princeton High School District.”
Also speaking was committee member Rosemary Duffy. Duffy said when committee members and others asked for a community meeting, there was no cooperation, so the committee was formed to force a community meeting.
Duffy said the issue was bigger than the board, the administration or even the people who attended Monday’s meeting
“The issue belongs to the community, and we would like it discussed and resolved,” she said.
Also speaking was committee member Marcia Thompson. Thompson said there were concerns about what would happen to the tax rate if Ohio was annexed into Princeton, and that Ohio taxpayers would assume the rate of the district they would be moving into. She provided information she had received from the Bureau County Clerk’s Office that for the 2008 tax year, Princeton’s tax rate was 2.09324 and Ohio’s was 4.1190.
“It would cut the rate in half,” Thompson said.
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Flesher responds
In response to the committee members’ comments, Superintendent Sharon Flesher said the board would be acting very irresponsibly to jump into something such as annexation of the high school without first examining the data and all options.
“In listening to the community, one very big concern is how these options would affect the grade school,” she said. “It would be a shame if the push for annexation by the Committee of 10 results in closing both the high school and the grade school.”
