The Board maintains that if we don't pass a referendum for a new building, the State of Illinois will come in and make us do repairs and updates in the name of Life Safety and that it will be costly. We don't know what those costs will be but it should not be near as much as building a $30 million school. We were told 23 years ago that if we didn't consolidate the State would come in and force a consolidation. We have not heard yet where the State is forcing consolidation and we haven't heard of them forcing unreasonable costs on schools to do repairs to satisfy Life Safety rules. People are tired of scare tactics as an inducement to comply with requests made by the school board.
The State of Illinois states that the life of a school building is 50 years. This is a ridiculous statement given the differences in the quality of school buildings. The Fieldcrest High School is 77 years old and the Fieldcrest Grade School is 78 years old but the Fieldcrest Grade School also has a 12 year old addition. The way buildings are built today perhaps 50 years might be their life span but schools built back in the 1930's were built much better than today's buildings.
The University of Illinois has many buildings that are over 80 years old such as their library. The Filger Library is 100 years old this year and there are no plans to tear it down. These buildings were maintained and that is what we should be doing with our school buildings rather than wait until everything piles up and then it all needs to be repaired at once. It is so American to tear down and rebuild rather than preserve and restore like they do in Europe.
Theoretically, democracy decrees that an elective body is elected to carry out the wishes of their constituents. This is not the case with the Fieldcrest Board of Education. For whatever reason, It seems they feel they know better than the general public. What is on everyone's mind is what is that reason?