Siding with the future

By

Opinion

July 19, 2019 - 4:11 PM

Our stories this week by Reporter Vickie Moss about the four owners who have sold their homes to make way for a new science and technology center at Iola High School, seem to have touched a few nerves, evidenced by the response on the Register’s Facebook page.

More than 2,000 people have read the stories on iolaregister.com. Of those, dozens shared their thoughts. Most of the comments were negative, with a few stalwart defenders, mostly family members of those who sold their homes or serve on school board, taking the time to illuminate naysayers about how the transactions came about.  

Among the most common complaints were that the owners had been forced to vacate their homes; that they should have relocated the houses instead of tearing them down; that the science and tech center should have been built elsewhere, and that had voters known this was the site for the center, they would have voted against the school bond issue.

Meanwhile, those who worked for two years to get a good plan for new schools passed, are banging their heads against the nearest wall, asking what else they could have done to inform people of such things if knocking on doors, printing flyers, holding public meetings, making hundreds of phone calls, and getting the word out on social media, in the newspaper and on radio didn’t work.

At that point, I guess you just wait for another opportunity to present itself, such as this week, to point out the facts, which are:

1. There was no coercion or demands on the four homeowners to sell their homes to the school district to make way for the new science and technology building. In fact, all said they had expected to sell in the near future and saw the district’s offer as an opportunity. 

2. All four were given the option to have their homes moved elsewhere, which they uniformly declined.

3. Of course there are some bittersweet moments in saying goodbye to a home, which they expressed. But in the end, all four voiced support for the use of the land, in the furtherance of educational opportunities in Iola.

 

THESE RECENT complaints made me grateful that in the beginning stages of considering what USD 257 needed in terms of facilities, steering committee members rejected outright the idea of eminent domain to make way for a new elementary school.

They looked at 22 possible locations to situate the Pre-K through 5th grade school, which, ideally, would require 15 acres. Included in those possibilities were the existing elementaries and plans to incorporate the old with the new.

Two things worked against those sites: to adequately renovate the old, you still would lose over advantages of starting new; and to get enough space you would have to condemn the homes on at least two blocks, sometimes three.

Of the 22 possibilities, only two, including the site ultimately selected at the intersection of Monroe and Kentucky, alleviated the pain of taking legal action to declare homeowners sell their homes to make way for a new school.

Nope, said the committee members. We’re not gonna do it.

Why the non-starter?

Because the 30-plus committee members are just like you and me. They have jobs, friends, neighbors, families and as such said they wouldn’t ask anything of others they wouldn’t want asked of them.

This wasn’t Big Brother making demands. Rather, it was Savannah and Ryan, Carla and Ray, Morgan and Jon, and many others working to make the best decisions possible for as many people as possible.

We owe these volunteers a big thank you for all the countless evenings they devoted to getting an acceptable plan passed.

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