Peoria School District combines ignorance and arrogance by banning citizen journalist from press conference

Sometimes I wonder if Peoria School District 150 is capable of avoiding bad publicity. It seems that no matter what the board or the administration does, they come off looking like a bunch of ignorant buffoons.

There's the whole move-Glen-Oak-School to the park debacle, of course. It started with secret meetings with the park board, included buying a bunch of homes on Prospect and ended with the park board backing away at the last minute, leaving a petulant Superintendent Ken Hinton threatening to punish the entire East Bluff for daring to oppose his will.

There was the board member leaving what he thought was an anonymous comment on the Journal Star Web site about a Catholic cabal on the Peoria City Council. There was the other board member who said she didn't need to meet with constituents to discuss the plan to cut 45 minutes out of the school day because all she needs to know the administration will tell her. And then there's the time they voted to change a student's grade from a "C" to a "B." And there are more examples of this sort of butt-headedness, but they are too numerous to mention. I'll leave it up to my commenters to provide additional recent examples.

But now the most recent example happened yesterday.
Hinton held a press conference Friday to announce a concession of sorts on the reduction in the length of the school day. He will recommend to the Board of Education that it restore 45 minutes to the schedule, except on Wednesday, when class would dismiss 90 minutes early.

No it doesn't make any sense to me either.

Diane Vespa, a businesswoman and mom, has been leading the opposition to the reduction. When she showed up to the press conference, she was denied entry on the grounds that she's not a reporter. In fact, she is. She's a citizen journalist, and has been since February 2007, long before she became an activist on this issue.

Full disclosure: Vespa is a friend. She and her husband, John Vespa, advertise on this site.

First, we have to understand that a press conference is not an open meeting. There is no state law stating that the public has to be allowed to attend press conferences. It was Ken Hinton's party and he could invite -- or not invite -- whoever he wanted.

But that doesn't mean the public's right to know didn't take a hit.

With Vespa kept out of the press conference, Hinton was spared having to answer questions from someone actively in opposition to the district's policies while the press was there, filming the answers. This no doubt spared Hinton some embarrassment in the short run. In the long run, it just helped cement the district's reputation for locking the public out of the process.

Normally, I'd give the people who make decisions at District 150 a lecture about citizen journalism and how the people who practice it are members of the media, even if they are opinionated. And I'd point out that trying to control the message by controlling the messenger really doesn't work out the way the controllers usually hope.

I'm not going to bother lecturing, because there's this funny thing about people who combine arrogance with an attitude that they are always right: It just never occurs to them that they might, just might, be wrong.

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit (please note NEW address).