Lend an ear: Agriculture wasn’t in the job description when Tom Mullins signed on as superintendent of New Lenox Elementary School District 122, but when you’re building schools on the site of a cornfield, you learn fast.
Enrollment is skyrocketing, and the school board is eager to start building two new elementary schools at Cedar and Laraway Roads, where a new subdivision is planned.
So when title and access hurdles were finally cleared, Mullins and Larry Surges, who oversees buildings and grounds for District 122, hurried over to the cornfield to learn how soon the crop could be harvested.
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“I learned more about corn in one day than I ever wanted to know,” Mullins said. “If it’s dimpled, it’s ready, so Larry and I were roaming through the cornfields” in search of dimpled corn.
Fortunately, the dimples were in evidence, Mullins said, and excavators are expected to get to work this month.