Local: Cops want good schools just like everyone else
C.J. has already posted about a report 1 in 4 city employees don’t live in the city. There’s already been a ton of comments.
I’ve posted about this topic before (here , here and here, among other times).
This issue drives me insane. Does the city have NO say in this matter? The way its been explained to me is that in exchange for police officers giving up the right to strike, the city has agreed to binding arbitration. And arbitrators say the city has no right to make residency an employment requirement.
I love police officers. In fact, I love them so much I want them to live next door to me. I grew up in the East Bluff where one cop who lived across the street and another who lived just down the block. Knuckleheads soon learned that anti-social behavior drew a quick and decisive response. Most chose the path of least resistance and took their stupidity elsewhere.
Of course, the son of one of these cops ended up in more than one fight with some knucklehead who took exception with his dad’s occupation.
But the thing that’s been explained to me more than once is that the main reason police officers don’t want to live in Peoria is that they do NOT want to send their kids to District 150 Schools. Can you blame them, considering that we often get school officials who side with the gun toting lawbreakers?
It’s like we’re living in a loop. Police officers don’t want to live here because of the schools. Crime gets worse because the cops don’t live here anymore. People get frightened by crime and move to the suburbs. Schools get worse because there’s no tax base. And even more cops fly to the burbs with everyone else.
I have the feeling that is we took a firehose and flushed out the criminals and their supporters from the schools, we’d see more police officers move back. Hell, we’d see a lot of law-abiding middle-class people moving back, and bringing their school-supporting tax dollars with them.
But as long as the City of Peoria has no control whatsoever over the quality of schools, we’re kidding ourselves if we expect the City of Peoria to fix the problems affecting the city of Peoria. The entity known as the Peoria School District Board of Education needs to fix these problems, but all they can come up with is that they need to build new buildings and cut the amount of time teachers have to teach.
Maybe a city takeover of the schools will become an issue in the upcoming elections. Here’s hoping.
Until that happens, I’d to see someone (*cough* state legislature *cough*) reign in the ability of arbitrators to set city policy. There is nothing unreasonable about a city making residency a requirement for employment. But I don’t see a Democrat-controlled legislature actually doing anything about it.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Don’t forget that they are also planning on instating a uniform policy. Let’s give credit where credit is due!
October 11th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Here’s an idea: Guarantee 10 extra minutes of one-on-one instructional time for each kid every week.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Approximately 5 to 7 years ago, the State Legislature amended the state collective bargaining law which previously prevented residency issues from going before an arbitrator – so communities had the ability to impose them. However, with the change in statute making it another topic for arbitration – it wasn’t long before the system failed and residency requirements throughout the state were eliminated due to arbitrator decisions. I say give them the right to strike and let’s all get it on. Arbitration is great in theory and abysmal in practice.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Billy, while I am all for extra help for students, I hope you don’t intend on having the teachers whose room the students are in fulfill your plan? That’s several hours a week of extra time they would have to commit and most have a pretty full plate as it is.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Hold on, because one town’s schools suck, you want arbitration rules to change? You have obviously never worked at place where a union was needed because of company practices. And no, pay is not the issue. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need unions and arbitrators but I’ve yet to find that happy place.
I can see why some would think a city employee should live in town. Was the employee hired to do a job or for tax income? To me it’s no different than a cat employee who has a backhoe business on the side having to buy cat backhoes because he works at cat. He might think the john deere backhoe is better but since he works at cat, he has to buy the cat.
If the city wants its employees to live in town, make the town a better place, i.e. fix the schools.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I don’t blame our officers at all. School’s are much different when we were young . Today thugs don’t care about human life or their ownlives . Its all about turf and we will show them.We have high school kids in my ares and they have sidewalks , but they want to walk in the streets my husband almost hit one of the kids the other day while backing out of our driveway and they cussed at him…. There is NO REPECT, things are different . I do not blame our officers . They want their kids to be as safe as we do ours…
October 12th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Should anyone who blogs and/or complains about how Peoria is run be forced to live in Peoria, too?
Much has been made, Billy, about the “Peoria Pundit” living outside of Peoria quite a bit in recent years.
I think people should be able to live whereever the hell they want, it used to be (pre-Bush/Rove) a free country.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
At no time during my occupancy of a mobile home in rural Pottstown was I also in the employ of the City of Peoria.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
October 13th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
If we had school choice, we wouldn’t have the problem of people fleeing District 150’s borders. Better yet, if we didn’t have government schools at all, this would not be an issue. If you live inside the border of District 150 are you forced to go to a doctor in District 150? Are you forced to go to a barber in District 150? A bar? A gas station? No. And you shouldn’t be confined to those crappy government schools either.