We’ll wait for the Illinois Supreme Court to debate an Appellate Court ruling related to a years-long lawsuit between the District 209 high schools and the politically connected Restore Construction Company.
After a major fire in the south portion of Proviso East in 2014, the school district — its over-politicized school board and its under-competent administration — rushed to hire Restore to make major repairs. Contracts were never bid. The school board never voted on the contract. And when the bill reached $7 million, our newly-elected reform-minded school board finally got its back up and said, “Enough.”
The board refused to pay the final $2 million, a lawsuit has been lingering, and in a legal outcome we are sure we don’t fully grasp, an appellate court seems to be making a new legal interpretation that might force the school to pay up. That’s where the Supreme Court will come in.
Meanwhile we are left with this possibly expensive reminder of just how poorly and politically our public high schools were run a half-decade back. As the schools now move forward on decades of overdue capital projects, we are heartened by how far we have come.
