A Million Dollars to Illinois Schools and McHenry County Doesn’t Get a Dime

It’s costly for McHenry County to have liberal Democrats, Melissa Bean in the U.S. House and Jack Franks in Springfield, especially when rules get written that penalize the schools in our districts from receiving grants.

Liberal Dems discriminated against McHenry County and Franks and Bean apparently did not object.

Or, if they did, any such objections had no effect.

There’s an example in a press release with the following headline from the State Board of Education on a federal pass-through grant:

For Immediate Release
June 9, 2010

State Board Awards Nearly $1 Million to Improve School Cafeterias

Of the 57 schools and 43 districts that got the money, not a single one was in McHenry County, as best I could tell. In other words, a million dollars widely distributed and not a dime ended up to McHenry County, one of the state’s largest counties.

Lake County Juvenile Detention Center

The Lake County Juvenile Detention Center got a bit more than $5,000. It qualifies as an academic center because its detainees go to school on site.

“We bought a new milk cooler and an auxiliary refrigerator and we got some new shelving for our walk-in freezer,”

the knowledgeable woman in administration who answered the phone told me.

In how the state board of education does accounting, the $903,000 of grants were described as “nearly $1 million.”

How liberals decided to discriminate against McHenry County was by specifying this requirement:

“Participating sites had to have at least 50 percent of students eligible for free and reduced-priced meals.”

Not 25% or 20% or 30%, but 50%.

I would think some schools in District 300 qualify. Most of those aren’t located in McHenry County, but the district does cover much of Lake in the Hills and Algonquin.  Some of its schools in Carpentersville have high concentrations of poor families.

Not all of the public funds went to public schools.

Beacon Hill Preparatory Academy is a private, not public school, with about 200 students in Harvey. It received $26, 610.

The New Village Leadership Academy is a private school for 60 students in Chicago. It’s not a public school. It received $18,477. How much cafeteria equipment do you need to improve its existing cafeteria to feed 60 students?

Do you think liberal Dems like Bean don’t look at spending to see how much is necessary to meet critical needs?

If someone took the time to investigate what each of these grants was actually going to be used for, it’s likely one would find a lot of spending that went to additional extras and not critical, if-we-don’t-have-the money-we-won’t-have-a-pot-to-cook-the-food-in expenses.

Bean voted to increase wasteful government spending and our national debt to where she can’t explain how we can pay for the interest on the debt in a few years.

Joe Walsh, who is challenging Bean in November, has a different approach. He is committed to common sense spending restraints and moving the country away from a steep cliff of debt and high unemployment.

In our analogy, the police cars are taxpayers.

Whenever I hear President Obama describe his driving the country as if it were a car, it’s obvious he and Bean are driving in Thelma-and-Louise fashion over a huge cliff of debt.

Will the U.S. economy crash as Thelma and Louise's convertible did in the movie?

In the Bean-Obama script, they probably exit the car as millionaires or positioned to make big money before it goes hurtling over the cliff.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *