"75% of the kids who leave Peoria for higher education will NOT return to Peoria to live and work. 85% of the kids who do not continue on to higher education will stay." So wrote Connie Franks, Director of Project Target to me a couple of years ago. What % of each graduating class at Bradley stay in the area after say 2 years? Maybe someone can put those figures in my comment section.
Why leave? Because bigger cities offer more of everything and younger people today are looking for adventures and positions not available in Peoria now nor have they been for decades. Where the big bucks have been spent, low wage jobs are offered. Examples, Cubs Foods, the RiverPlex, the PPD Zoo, Gateway Center, One Technology Center, the ball park, the potential museum, the planned new $48 million BelWood Nursing home, safety net for the poor, and the $27 million expansion of the Peoria Public libraries. (some outsiders and insiders say you are surely kidding? No we're not). Qualifying for the private sector is also the ball park, the new Hy-Vee grocery store, the stores at the Shoppes, new restaurants, fitness clubs.
Where are the big bucks in PRIVATE investment like in FireFly, Globe Energy and uh-uh-uh, help me out. Yes, top jobs in education, 20 top administrators at D150 making 6 figure salaries, not including fantastic pensions, vacations, health care, etc.,(and successive administrators and boards have not got the job done or we wouldn't be opening a charter school), Bradley and ICC and high pay in the upper echelons of our Medical Centers and Medical Society. High Tech jobs, yes, but nowhere near enough and not much on the horizon. Then there is the highly touted Transport Regional Port District kicked off in 2003. Results to date - like new businesses??
New Manufacturers? Where?, and those few that employ how many above living wages jobs?
Not to be overlooked are the temporary high pay union jobs while building these public structures, offset, in the long run with increasing taxes and fees that go on forever.
I am not dumb. I know what the movers and shakers are trying to do but when Dr. John Erwin of ICC, in his LTE to the JS on 1/6/10, in promoting the new charter school says, "With the LEADERSHIP (what?) of the D150 School Board and administration and faculty....and Mayor Ardis says, "in a failing high minority school district....
It's not like suddenly we are inventing the wheel after 2 decades. But maybe Cat is finally getting really worried.
Oh well, read my numerous old blogs on "education" and see you Monday eve.
No comments:
Post a Comment