Lawsuit not the answer to boundary concerns

Does anyone believe the reasons a group of Indian Prairie Unit District 204 residents are considering suing the district actually include anything other than the fact they don't want their kids to attend Waubonsie Valley High School?

When the school board selected the Eola Road site, newspapers and district officials reported residents' comments were overwhelmingly positive about the choice.

Then, suddenly, after boundaries were decided upon, two areas of the district that were being switched from attending Metea Valley under the old boundary plan to Waubonsie Valley under the new plan suddenly are worried the Eola Road land is dangerous "for our kids?"

So much so that they are considering hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit?

How big-hearted of them, considering their kids won't be there.

If the land is so environmentally suspect, then why aren't parents in Stonebridge, whose kids would attend the new high school, stepping up to complain about the land?

"This (Eola Road) site doesn't make sense, and the due diligence that's taken place is ridiculous," the group's spokesman, Todd Andrews, told the Daily Herald.

Funny that Andrews -- who held an organizational meeting at the White Eagle clubhouse comprised of mostly White Eagle and Tall Grass residents -- didn't feel this way before the boundaries were announced.

Most people felt the Eola Road site made perfect geographical sense. Why didn't he convene the group and make these statements weeks ago, when the land was selected and public comment was being taken?

The group's allegation the district somehow engaged in an old-fashioned "bait and switch" is laughable. The District 204 school board chose the Brach-Brodie land several years ago to build the third high school.

During the campaign to pass the 2006 referendum, the Brach-Brodie land was identified as the parcel where the district would build, but I remember often hearing that the vote didn't tie the district to that land.

However, the district spent nearly two years trying to get that land at a decent price.

How can anyone think the incredible amount of time and money spent going through the courts and the legislature trying to get the Brach and Brodie trusts to sell that land to the district for a decent price meant that the district really didn't want it and planned to "switch" to the Eola land?

Why didn't Andrews and his group get organized to help the district get that land?

Seems to me there were residents in and around Tall Grass at the time trying to get the district to switch to land west of their subdivision, land owned by Macom. But now that they don't like the way the boundaries have been drawn, they accuse the district of bait-and-switch and claim to "want" the Brach-Brodie land?

To me, this group sounds like a bunch of spoiled children, throwing a legal tantrum because they aren't getting what they want.

Instead of being happy their children will go to one of the smaller two high schools in the district (as some of their neighbors are) these parents need to have things done their way or try to derail the time-sensitive plan to provide decent-sized high schools for all the children of 204.

As someone who has lived here from the time Waubonsie was the only high school in 204 (and the one I assumed my kids would go to when we moved in) to the time when some of my neighbors' kids were disappointed they were being taken out of Waubonsie to go to Neuqua, to the years that Neuqua was a great, decent-sized school and now to the years of Neuqua being an overcrowded frustration -- I can say with conviction that if it were me, I'd be thrilled my kids were going to the smaller Waubonsie.

I don't have that choice, and even if I did, my kids are now too old because the 2005 referendum was voted down.

Are we to drag this out with more lawsuits so more and more kids each year will have to go through high school with ridiculously large classes and smaller and smaller extracurricular opportunities?

Because if this lawsuit derails the district's plans, what's to stop the next people who are upset from doing the same thing? Who wins here?

Hey, none of this affects me in the least bit anyway, so why should I care? In the spirit of "Neighborhood Schools for our Children," I should only be looking out for my own interests.