Recently in School District 203 Category

The Naperville School District 203 community spoke up in February when it approved a tax-increase referendum to pay for a $115 million facilities-improvement plan. Part of that project is an $11 million early childhood center to be built in the Huntington Estates subdivision off Naper Boulevard.

Architectural plans and computer-generated designs were unveiled Monday night. Groundbreaking is scheduled for April, with completion in 2010.

Also Monday, the district heard updated plans for the $5.2 million renovation of the Naperville North swimming pool.

What do you think of the proposals? Are plans progressing the way you expected? How well do you think the early childhood center blends in with the neighborhood? What do you think of the pool plan?

Sure, of course you do. That stuff you read/hear about would never happen to you, because you monitor what your children do online. That's why there's no need for you to go to tonight's Internet safety meeting in Naperville for parents, right?

Let's do a quick poll: How many of your kids have MySpace or Facebook accounts? Ever had to order your kid to remove a photo from one of those sites? Ever consider they might be creating additional accounts and hiding them from you?

Do you let your child have a computer in his/her bedroom, with a web cam? That's just asking for trouble.

How about cameras on cell phones? It's becoming quite common for kids to take nude pictures of themselves or their friends and send them electronically to each other, as pranks, or sometimes to spite someone. Have you ever asked to look at the pictures stored in your kid's cell phone?

Just a few thoughts. Creepy predators using the Internet to lure kids is so 2004. Nowadays, it's more about how kids are using technology to embarrass themselves and their families.

Thanks to a Sun reader, we were alerted Thursday morning to 25 or 30 computer monitors dumped in a trash bin outside Naperville's Ranch View Elementary School.

Once we checked it out and verified the presence of the discarded computer materials, we wondered: If the monitors couldn't be donated to anyone, shouldn't they at least be recycled?

It turns out -- and we want to thank District 203 officials for being very helpful and straightforward in getting to the bottom of this -- that someone else likely illegally placed the materials in the school's Dumpster, a practice known as "fly dumping."

We saw this as an opportunity to inform people that because electronics equipment usually contains lead and other hazardous materials, it shouldn't be tossed in the trash. It should be recycled and kept out of landfills.

What do you do with your old electronics gear? Are there enough electronics recycling opportunities in the area to make it convenient for people to properly dispose of materials?

Monday's Sun features a report about the Illinois Teachers Retirement System. It's $22 billion underfunded. That's money the state owes it, but hasn't yet paid, because Illinois has a tendency to balance its budget the only way it knows how--by deferring mandated payments to retirement systems (the state also drags its feet reimbursing health care providers). Overall, the state's running a $42 billion deficit in pension funding.

TRS and teachers' unions say their pensions are not excessively generous, that only a few administrators get the golden-parachute deals we hear about. And that recent laws have curtailed excessive end-of-career raises that bump up retirement benefits. The average annual benefit TRS pays out is about $40,000 a year, or $3,344 a month.

What do you think? Is this entirely a state problem? Are teachers' pensions too low, too high or just right? What other laws should be enacted to curb abuses of the pension system?

(Editor's note: an earlier version of this entry incorrectly reported the amount of the state's TRS deficit.)

The plagiarism scandal at Naperville School District 203 deepened Thursday when school officials revealed that the Naperville Central High School valedictorian also plagiarized a speech. At the same time, the district said it was reassigning Principal Jim Caudill, who admitted plagiarizing a former student's speech when he gave an address at a commemorative ceremony last week.

The district asked the student to return the valedictorian medal, and the speech will be removed from the videotape of the graduation ceremony. (School officials said they discovered that "portions of the address bear a strong similarity to another graduation speech published on the Internet.")

The district said it would form a blue-ribbon panel to review policies related to plagiarism, and called for "reason and integrity" instead of emotion. it noted "Caudill has provided 34 years of tireless service to our students and community."

What do you think of the district's response? What will Caudill's new assignment be? (Could he possibly oversee the massive reconstruction of Naperville Central?) What about the graduating valedictorian--is the punishment just, in your opinion?

Naperville Central High School Principal Jim Caudill Tuesday delivered a speech at graduation. Problem was, it wasn't his own. A large portion of the speech was from a 1997 address written by a student. Caudill admits he didn't credit the student or receive permission before or during the speech, though he says he intended to. He's apologized for his mistake.

In this era of making examples out of students who break rules and/or laws, should Caudill face any additional consequences? Do you believe this was an innocent mistake? What do you think should happen to Caudill?

Newsweek is out with a new list of the nation's top 1,300 high schools, and Waubonsie Valley High School is the only one of the four public high schools serving Naperville on this list. In 2007, Neuqua Valley High School -- Indian Prairie School District's other high school -- was No. 607 on this list, but is absent from the initial 2008 rankings.

Congratulations to Waubonsie!! All public education facilities in Naperville are outstanding, and this is further proof.

How important is the ranking to you? Is it just another list? Do Naperville residents place too much emphasis on lists? Why is it that Neuqua, Naperville Central and Naperville North are not on this list?

UPDATE: On Friday, both districts put out e-mails saying they contacted Newsweek and were told that Neuqua Valley, Naperville Central and Naperville North high schools all were omitted from the list by mistake and will be included when an updated list is posted next week.

UPDATE NO. 2: The updated list shows Neuqua Valley ranked No. 910, Naperville North No. 927, Naperville Central No. 1,011 and Waubonsie Valley No. 1,107.

An eighth-grader at Naperville's Jefferson Junior High School was arrested Friday for allegedly bringing a pellet gun to school. Authorities petitioned him as a juvenile, and he'll likely face disciplinary action by the school district as well.

The school district says it must adopt a zero-tolerance policy these days, and understandably so. Should the boy be allowed to graduate, or be expelled? Aside from the school's right to administer discipline, was the arrest necessary? Should a child who breaks a rule by bringing a pellet gun to school face criminal consequences?

Tell us what you think.

Thanks to inflation, Naperville School District 203 may decide to skip the collection of an additional $82 a year, on average, in property taxes that voters recently agreed to pay for facilities improvements.

I saw this graphic on the front page of our sister publication, The Herald News, on Wednesday, and thought it illustrated well how voters rejected all but one of the tax-increase referendums in Will County on Tuesday.