Palatine School Referendum Stirs Anger
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Voters in Palatine are being asked to approve a plan to borrow $130 million for two new schools, including one that would be built on a park.
The referendum is on the ballot in Palatine next week, asking residents for permission to sell $130 million in bonds to build a new middle school on property District 15 already owns, and a new K-5 elementary school on what is now Osage Park.
Elliott Davidow, president of the 340-member Kingsbrooke condominium association, which shares a property line with Osage Park, said condo owners are outraged.
"Seventy to eighty unit owners are over the age of 75, and they every morning stand outside my house with pitchforks and burning torches," he said.
Davidow said Osage Park serves as a social gathering place for the condo owners.
"People know each other because of the park. It's remarkable.," he said.
Opponents of the school plan have said it is a boondoggle, and no one has given a good explanation why they need to build the school that would replace Osage Park. The school would accommodate 1,200 students, many of them lower-income and Spanish-speaking children, and critics have said the plan would segregate those students.
"These are all the kids that basically come from economically-deprived homes, and don't do well on the testing, and I went 'Seriously? You're going to put 1,200 kids at one school that are economically disadvantaged?" Davidow said.
If approved, the school plan would raise property taxes in Palatine to pay off the bonds. It would also mean the closure of Gray Sanborn Elementary School.
