Let's pass the District 113 referendum

I understand that opponents to the District 113 referendum are raising some of the same arguments they raised two years ago.  I think that their arguments are wrong, and I’d like to say why and go on record in favor of the referendum. 

The two buildings which are proposed for replacement at Highland Park High School were state of the art when they were built a year after my grandmother graduated from there in 1913.  They were serviceable in 1942, when my mother graduated.  They were decrepit when I graduated in 1965.  They were way below standard when my son graduated in 2006.  They have not improved since then, even with new roofs.

I asked a friend who was on the school board when the new roofs were approved about the board's decision.  He told me that they did so because they ran out of buckets to put under the leaks.  And that this has been the situation with the pools as well.  You can only patch things so long.  Tuckpointing the landmark” buildings to make them last another 50 years, as some have suggested, will not make them ADA-compliant or make them suitable for today's needs.   We would only have a pair of 150-year-old school buildings.  I doubt that there is a single student or teacher who has been at the high school in the past two decades who thinks the facilities are adequate for today's needs, much less those of the next two generations of students.

No one, to my knowledge, has produced a "better plan," which opponents said last time we should wait for.  Would they wait another 10 or 20 years until the buildings are more than a century old to do something about them?  After another 10 or 20 years of increased maintenance costs?  After the new roofs need replacement?  Remember, each dollar taken out of the district's operating budget for increased maintenance costs for the current aged buildings and facilities is a dollar that can't be spent on our teachers and students.

Two things are certain:  Construction costs won't be any lower if we continue to wait for a "better plan" to arise next year, the year after, or five years from now.  And if we don't approve the referendum this year, our taxes will have to be increased later to pay for the higher costs of any other plan.  Any other plan will cost all of us more and produce less.

I strongly recommend a "yes" vote to protect our investment in our community.