Good for the Riverside Village Board for “respectfully” overturning an earlier vote by its planning and zoning commission that turned down a request from the Star Buds dispensary on Harlem Avenue to open an hour earlier.
It was always a reasonable request. The unanimous vote of the plan commission opposing an 8 a.m. opening time, in fact, was odd.
The upside of the conversations this process engendered is that a couple of legitimate concerns of immediate residential neighbors have been addressed. The lighting in the parking lot has been adjusted to contain overflow. Neighbors have been given a simple way to reach a manager if there are nuisance issues taking place, such as public urination.
The concern over school children being impacted on their walks to school always seemed wrong to us. The dispensary is fully Harlem focused. Kids are not living on that stretch of Harlem. And Riverside kids living on adjacent residential streets all head west not east.
Pot is now legal. Riverside gets a notable sales tax revenue bump from Star Buds. And the positioning of this new business was meticulously planned to minimize any impact beyond Harlem.
New LTHS discipline options
Leaders at Lyons Township High School are on the right path with their growing focus on restorative justice responses to bad student behavior and the corresponding effort to substantially limit both in-school and out-of-school suspensions.
The district’s actions will bring it into conformity with a statewide effort to severely limit suspensions and expulsions, which have proven to be ineffective methods of disciplining high school students. Excluding students from class, or worse from the building, only further isolates young people who need more connection not less.
The shift, which really takes hold next school year, will succeed, or not, based on its implementation. The district’s administration and school board seem ready to make the investment of resources necessary to accomplish its goals. Special “restorative intervention” classrooms are being set aside on each campus. And funding has been approved to hire two specialists and two para-educators to staff these rooms.
That expertise will create the environment that allows honest conversations with students, restorative circles, accountability projects, and other measures combining both consequences and a positive path.
Of course, both suspensions and expulsions remain options for the most serious offenses and repeat offenses. But actively steering away from such an approach is a credit to LTHS.