On Monday, Aug. 28, Kaneland Community School District 302 hosted its regularly scheduled board meeting at 7 p.m. in the sixth-grade team room at Kaneland Harter Middle School. All members of the board were present at this meeting. Following the Pledge of Allegiance, roll call and approval of the agenda, the Board recognized Joe Kryszak for his work at Elburn Days.
District Director of Special Services Fran Eggleston introduced Kryszak as the man who makes Elburn Days accessible to those with special needs by running a special needs carnival.
Next, the Board approved the consent agenda. Following the approval, the Board moved to public comments, including one from community member Monika Hubble.
“I do want to bring up the concern that the school improvement referendum did not pass, and now Crown Community Development and Sugar Grove are trying to push a 127 million dollar Tax Increment Financing (TIF) through. I don’t know how that’s going to help our schools,” Hubble said.
Hubble does not have children in the district anymore but knows many people who do. She is worried about the outcome of the TIF and how it will impact the district.
“How will adding less funding and more students be beneficial to District 302?” Hubble said.
Lastly, she mentioned that the increased truck traffic on Route 47 will impact the district substantially due to heavier congestion and increased risks for student drivers.
Next, the district’s Director of Communications David Chavez showed a highlight video of how Kaneland’s first day of school went throughout the district, including clips from the new Kaneland IgKnight Personalized Learning Academy (KIPLA).
“We have been planning this day for over three years,” KIPLA Principal Laura Garland said.
District Superintendent of Schools Dr. Todd Leden told the Board that on Thursday, Aug. 24, they had their first Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) meeting. The next meeting will be in October.
“We will have an academic update with standards-based grading being one of those at CAC,” Leden said.
Another update was concerning the emergency day used on Aug. 24. Due to the high temperatures, school was canceled for the day. The district will make up that day on Friday, May 24, as it was one of five built-in emergency days.
The Board will discuss an online learning plan for any future emergency days in an upcoming meeting. They also plan to talk about the construction of warehouses on Route 47 and how this might impact the school district. The next meeting will be held on Monday, Sept. 11.
![When I chose to take a tour of the Old Joliet Prison in Joliet, IL, I had no idea what I was walking into. I’ve heard of multiple paranormal events happening here, but I was more interested in how a prisoner lived. I wanted to feel their hopelessness and wanted to understand what it must have been like to sit in an empty cell and yearn for sunlight.
The Old Joliet Prison is a daunting structure that appears, seemingly, out of nowhere. When driving to the prison, it isn’t until someone is a few feet away that they see the large walls and barbed wire. Just driving past it, they can feel a change in the atmosphere.
When a prisoner is being driven there, they don’t know how close they are. They are driving through a suburban neighborhood before they reach a small unassuming bridge. Yet, as soon as they go under the bridge and back into the sunlight, they finally see the prison and know that as soon as they go in, they will never come out.
“In 1878, the Prison was filled well over capacity with nearly 2,000 inmates,” according to jolietprison.org, a website that tells the history of the prison and allows for you to sign up for tours. “[There were] reports of unsanitary and dangerous conditions emerged.”
Throughout the state, people knew the allegations that staff was abusing the prisoners as well as killing them. Once a prisoner was told that they were going to Old Joliet Prison, they knew that it was a death sentence](https://kanelandkrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/prison1.jpg)
