The original Central School was surrounded by greenspace that included two ball fields.  The only complaint about it was that the heating was difficult to control in one of the classrooms.

But the School Board had decided to tear down East School and consolidate those students at Central.  The School Board never entertained the idea of adding-on to Central.

Central would be demolished and LBES would rise in its place.

Instead of the lesser amount that would be required for adding-on, the School Board wanted the voters to approve the school district's plans to borrow $24.4 million.  Old bonds were expiring, so if new bonds in the same amount could be issued, the School Board could claim that building the new school would "not raise taxes".

We could have a school for free!  The wizards on the School Board had found a way that we could have a beautiful new school and taxes would not go up.  What they did not trumpet was the fact that if we did not issue new bonds in place of the expiring bonds, taxes would have gone down.

Still, they had to show us what we were buying, and why we were not simply adding-on, so they produced the following graphic promise which included a baseball field and a soccer field:

Well, folks noticed that we would plow-under a pre-Civil War graveyard and a forest.  Another graphic promise produced by the School Board preserved the forest.

The graveyard had to go, but the School Board added facilities for the District Offices ("D.O." in the following diagram) that were suggested as a cost-saving feature.

There was still enough greenspace for some undefined ball field.

Well, the referrendum passed by 20 votes and we now pay $5,000 per month to rent space on Waukegan Road for the District offices because we didn't build them.  The school that was built bears no resemblance to the two graphic promises of the School Board.  And the only greenspace is an odd dogbone shape:

The boundary with the adjacent golf course is shown by the blue line in the photo below.  It is established by a split rail fence that is lined with a welded wire fence.

The yellow depression by the road is a detention pond that is surrounded by that same type of double fence.

The sides of the dogbone are also lined with that double fence.  It is less than 21 yards across its waist from double fence to double fence, indicated by the red double-headed arrow in the photo below.

The long narrow waist of the dogbone makes it unsuitable for any type of ball field.

It makes one wonder if the referendum would have passed were the School Board more candid with the taxpayers.

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