Lincoln-Way District 210 – Students ARE relevant!

Will Co. (ECWd) –

Below is the speech Jordan Pajeau read to the D210 School Board members during a recent Board of Education meeting.  It is clear this young student gets it!  The Board members of D210 should be ashamed of their actions and we can only pray that the authorities handling the criminal investigation do a thorough job and hold those guilty of wrongdoing accountable.  

Have we forgotten school is supposed to be about the kids and our future?  This young student has not! 

Thank you, Jordan Pajeau!  

“Good evening – my name is Jordan Pajeau. I am currently a sophomore at Lincoln-Way North High School – I am a PHOENIX. My fellow classmates and I stand as the casualties in the Board’s decision to close Lincoln-Way North.

When the Board of Education voted to close Lincoln-Way North last year, it was because the district reported that there was not enough money to run our 4 schools. The latest Treasurers Report indicates that we are ahead of last year’s numbers by almost 6 million dollars. You now have enough money to operate all 4 Lincoln-Way Schools. Why are you still closing Lincoln-Way North, why are you closing my school? Now you say it’s necessary to close my school because of declining enrollment – a supposed decline that hasn’t even occurred.

The last time I addressed the Board, I spoke of the fallout from your decision to close Lincoln-Way North that my teammates and I experienced first-hand at another Lincoln way school. Not one board member approached me after that meeting to say – I am sorry that happened to you, I’m sorry you experienced this. Mr. Reilly was the only person that sat on that stage that evening and approached me after the meeting to say that he was so sorry that I had this experience and that it was not representative of that school. I would like to say thank you to Mr. Rielly, because the compassion that he showed that night, has meant a great deal to me.

I attended a court hearing over spring break and was appalled when I witnessed the attorney that represents you say that “students are irrelevant” – isn’t that why we are all here – because of me and my fellow classmates? How can we, as students, be irrelevant, in any context, ever?

I used to be so excited to go to school-I loved school, but now – every day at North represents a last time for me. Every game that I go to, or every function, is a last time. My brother went to East for two years, and was at North for two years. His class was the first to graduate at North. His fight at North was simply that it wasn’t Lincoln Way East, everything that North did was compared to East. My sister went to North and graduated from North. She loved North and called it home for 4 years-there was no fight for her. She looks back on those years and memories with much happiness. I on the other hand will remember this year at North as my fight year. My fight for North and my fight for what is right. I think it’s ironic that a few people addressed the Board at the Lincoln Way North Board meeting to remind us all about how wonderful Lincoln Way is – about what a great job the Board is doing and how wonderful it is that their children can attend the very same school that they did and still have a wonderful experience – all in the very same school that is slated to close, and the students that have and now call it home, will never be able to say the same.

Whenever there is an article about Dr. Wyllie and his enormous pension that is at the top 1% of all pensions in the State of Illinois, or an article about how daycare is run out of all 4 high schools rent-free, or how a dog training facility was built and run all on taxpayer money, I think that maybe, just maybe, students truly are irrelevant in our district.”

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