The pressure to build a new high school on the edge of Champaign is immense. If the school board is serious about examining inner-city alternatives, it should appoint a special committee to help in the process.

Champaign school administrators and board members are laying the groundwork for construction of a new high school, and their preference to locate that school on the fringe of the community is obvious.

Seven potential sites have been mentioned, all on the edges of Champaign. Nonetheless, school board president Dave Tomlinson said the district is interested in considering an inner-city site and is working with city officials to find a suitable location.

Tomlinson says he is serious about studying all options, and we'll take him at his word. But some suspect his comments are nothing more than lip service to a constituency that abhors the idea of building a substantial 70-80 acre complex somewhere on the edge of Champaign.

It's a sure bet that those who have prepared the plans the board is using in its decision-making process don't take the idea seriously. As Laurie Reynolds pointed out in a recent guest commentary on the issue, only one page of a 92-page report is devoted to alternatives other than possible sites on the edge of the city.

So people shouldn't kid themselves about what will happen, absent a serious new examination of possible locations or options in the inner core of Champaign.

There is little question that Champaign Central High School is hopelessly inadequate to meet the current demands placed on it. There also is little question that it is perceived by students and parents as playing second fiddle to Champaign Centennial in a variety of ways.

So plans for a big, new high school with athletic fields and room for parking on a huge plot of ground should come as no surprise. When high school parents visit Bloomington-Normal, they often return speaking in enraptured terms about the new schools there, and it's clear they wish to follow the same path here.

But critics have a good point that a new school on the fringe would put extra driving pressure on many people while encouraging even more sprawl. Further, taking away a big school located just a few blocks west of downtown Champaign would create a big hole, even if the building continues to be used by the school district.

But is there a viable inner-core alternative? Obviously, it would take a lot of space to build a new high school. Sure, the school board could acquire the Champaign County YMCA property near Central, but how much good would that do? To acquire the kind of space Central needs would mean using eminent domain authority to purchase nearby property.

That could engender significant resentment. Plus, the sites would have to be cleared for construction, driving up the multimillion-dollar price tag of this project.

There are a lot of really tough issues here. Identifying property on the fringe as a site is almost a no-brainer. Coming up with a achievable and viable inner-core alternative would require lots of work.

If the school board is serious about avoiding the negatives of fringe development, it ought to appoint a special committee not just to examine but to outline a step-by-step procedure by which it could be done.

Obviously, that would require a talented group of people with expertise in a variety of areas and the ability to make dispassionate evaluations. But it also would not hurt to have someone genuinely committed to alternatives, like Reynolds or perhaps former Mayor Dannel McCollum, to join them.

There has been discussion for years about building a new high school. But the principal question that surrounded that possibility was how to pay for it, not where it should be. The presumption always has been that it would go somewhere on the edge.

And that's where it will go unless every effort is made to find an acceptable inner-core alternative.