Letter to the editor

Voters in the Pekin school district will go to the polls on Sept. 10 to decide whether to make all seven school board seats at-large instead of the current format of two at-large seats and five members representing each of the five districts.

Below is a letter from Erin Pedrick and the members of the group Pride in Pekin explaining why they collected signatures to place this measure on the ballot.

The petition was organized by the group- Pride in Pekin; with over a dozen people working to collect the signatures needed. Pride in Pekin is a collective group of community members, parents and Pekin school staff that wanted to work together to bring public awareness to what has been going on at Pekin School. The group Pride in Pekin was formed as a way for many people to work together and a survey was sent in early spring to all staff asking for their input, with all responses remaining anonymous. 79% of staff said they were dissatisfied with the current school board; 79% answered that our district was headed in a negative direction and 74% answered that we were headed in a negative direction due to our current school board. At the end of the survey the staff had the opportunity to voice any concern that they wanted to make known- there were many negative stories regarding the school board and many accusations of improper conduct. This sparked a lot of public discussion on the need to make changes with the school board.

What we repeatedly heard was how the districts were divided did not make sense. Pekin is a consolidation of Richland, Ollie, Packwood and Hedrick schools over the years; but the last consolidation bringing Hedrick into the mix was over 30 years ago. Why are we still looking at ourselves as 5 different towns, each needing our own director to represent our town? We are one school district, we are one school community and we need to start acting as one together. The school board should consist of our 7 best individuals that can lead our district, no matter where they live within the district. We should not be limiting ourselves just because multiple people that would be the best leaders for the district reside within the same area. We should not be putting someone on the board just because they were the only person that ran in a specific district and we had no other choice, when another district had multiple highly qualified people willing to serve.

The second issue that this proposed change would solve is if a director moves but stays within the school district. Currently, if a director moves out of their specific district they must resign off the board and a new director of the board’s choosing is appointed. With the change, if they move but remain within the school district, their board position would not be affected. As with any business- onboarding, training and getting an individual up to speed with the knowledge needed to serve on the board comes at an expense- some of it monetary, most of that at the expense of what they can contribute while they learn how the school operates. We should be looking to minimize turnover when we have a strong, dedicated and qualified individual on the board. This has recently happened- a very good, qualified, smart, dedicated board member happened to move to the wrong side of the highway and therefore had to give up his board position. A leader that we definitely did not want to lose! He was replaced and the new individual has served a short time and now will be facing the same situation- he will be moving outside of his district boundaries soon and we will go through this process again. This kind of turnover is not good! When a board seat is up for election, the public gets to vote on who the individual is that will fill that role. When a director resigns midterm, the remaining board members get to pick whoever they want to fill that seat for the remainder of the term.

The proposed change with all board members being at large is not new or unique. Several of our surrounding school districts operate this way.

Why did we petition for the change? The Pekin School Board was not going to present this change themselves. After hearing so many community members agree that 7 at large directors was a better option, we decided we needed to voice the public’s opinion. The only way to do so was to file a petition and then that required that the board put it out for public vote so that the public has their say on the issue.

Erin Pedrick and the members of Pride in Pekin