The City Council is more transparent than it was in the past, and more light is shed on more vigorous debate. All true, PW.

The school districts, however, need way more attention because the cost of their opacity far outweighs that of city government. That’s due to a much higher numerator (cost) and a much lower denominator (transparency).

Parents of students don’t have exclusive say on how the schools are run. All taxpayers have equal say.

School boards: The party is over.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We couldn’t agree more, FWT, especially with regards to your penultimate paragraph.

I’m relatively we new to D64 and I have been shocked at how little we parents have been asked to pay for certain activities. For example, the band program is amazing and the teachers put in countless extra hours, at very little cost to the participating students. I’d gladly pay more to ensure this program’s continued viability.

It also surprises me how few people contribute voluntarily to the “booster” type organizations that have been set up to support those activities, I think it’s kind of shameful.

Lastly, I think it’s outrageous that parents are complaining about the costs of after school care. It’s kind of sickening how entitled some parents seem to be. Or maybe they’re just clueless since they haven’t been asked to subsidize much of their kids’ education? Had I known this was brewing I would have happily stepped up and spoken my mind.

EDITOR’S NOTE: To your point “Had I known this was brewing…”, D-64 has always seemed to go out of its way to keep controversial and/or unpleasant things under the radar, which is one reason you’ll never hear the D-64 administration acknowledging its customary failure to place even one of its schools on any of the top 50-100 lists of ISAT scores, etc. And the local newspapers apparently don’t find school board meetings nearly as interesting as City Council meetings, especially when almost every D-64 Board member sings from the same hymnal and the issues are less easily understood – if only because that’s the way the administration prefers them.

PW, your note to 10:15’s comment overlooked the statements in the CFC report recommending more transparency and better information to the taxpayers. Based on your criticisms over the years, I would have thought you would have recognized those remarks.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We “embedded” that report in the post so that readers like yourself could get the whole picture, including that purported emphasis on transparency. But we also note that such emphasis is only being recommended by the CFC, and has not yet been adopted by the Administration and/or Board. Until then, we will retain our “healthy” skepticism.

As stated in an email to the parents who use AfterCare at Jefferson, the original information was as follows:

“…The program is going from an hourly rate to a flat rate fee structure of $70/week per child for 5 day a week coverage and $30/week for 2 days of coverage for a child.”

Please Note:

This new fee structure was voted on by the School Board with no discussion, no presentation of a business plan of why these changes would benefit either the administration of Jefferson school or the parents according to the published minutes on the D64.org website. There does not appear to be any discussion of the impact these changes would have on enrollement in the 2012-2013 school year or how this information would be communicated to the parents of current attendees.

Regarding D64 school / activity fees: many families are struggling, and what seems to be a nominal amount to some is a large amount to others.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We agree that “many families are struggling,” including many who never have had kids in D-64 schools, or who had them there years/decades ago when the cost of education, even adjusted for inflation, was much less than it currently is. We don’t see, howveer, how “struggling” justifies taxpayer subsidies for electives and extracurriculars – or, for that matter, any reduction in the property taxes assessed – given the bargain a D-64 education already is, notwithstanding our occasional criticisms.

Which school board member voted against it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: It was Anthony Borrelli, who seems to be the only Board member with his head on straight.

At the risk of sounding unsympathetic it’s hard to buy the “many families are struggling” line when our schools have some of the lowest low income populations around. 4% for my son’s elementary school. 0% for Maine South, which I know isn’t D64 yet most of the students feed in from D64.

We came from a school with a much higher low income population yet parents were expected to pick up extracurricular costs and pay pretty hefty tuition fees for before and after school care.

The school was willing to work with families who were struggling — and I know D64 school are, too. For example, the fifth graders go on a 3-day outdoor education trip and PTO has “scholarships” set aside for families who are having a hard time financially can still send their kids. That makes sense.

But parents who have the means should not continue to get a (nearly) free ride.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some people can’t (or don’t want to) distinguish need from greed. And, unfortunately, too few of our public officials are willing to step up and make that distinction for them.

Today’s Journal reports that the D-64 board unanimoulsly extended Bender’s contract through 2014 because they are so pleased with the job he’s doing. Kind of undercuts your arguments a bit, doesn’t it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Given our opinion of the D-64 board and D-64’s objectively measurable performance vis-a-vis the taxes it assesses and the money it spends, their extending of Bender’s contract could be viewed as endorsing our arguments.

“..their extending of Bender’s contract could be viewed as endorsing our arguments.”

Ha. Good point. The more I think about this, the angrier I get. I have been trying for some time to figure out what the deal is with D64, why it’s not better than the test scores, as you point out, indicate.

Granted, unlike you, I think they are doing plenty right. I have seen some amazingly dedicated teachers up close. And what’s most impressive to me is that they don’t seem to “teach to the test,” as many schools and districts do. I know for a fact, for example, that some of the top performing schools spend countless hours in and outside of class time drilling on test prep. If our kids were subjected to that approach, the scores would probably be higher. But I wouldn’t be happy about that and I’m not sure our future generation would be better educated in the long run.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. It seems that this CFC is on the right track. It will be interesting to see what they turn up on how much some of the activities the district provides actually cost and hopefully adjust fees accordingly. I wish they’d go a step farther and see exactly how top-performing districts spend their money along with how much they charge for activities and things like after school care.

I know I hadn’t truly considered the possibility that too many of our dollars are being spent on superfluous expenses like after school care at Jefferson and the correlation this might have to overall performance. I have a feeling if our money was spent in the right places — the three Rs you alluded to — maybe our test scores would be higher.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The PREA’s standard brag/lament that “we don’t teach to the test” is duplicitous at best – like those warm-and-fuzzy coaches who insist they don’t play to win.

If the state is going to require standardized testing, only an idiot wouldn’t try to have students do well on thoes tests – because you can be darn sure that those test scores are being used by all sorts of people to judge the comparative educational quality of various districts. So why not teach to the test, so long as that’s not all you teach?

If other districts have some good ideas on spending money wisely and efficiently, fine. But let’s not slavishly emulate what others are doing: we’ve seen too many of our local public officials use what others are doing as an excuse for their incompetence or lack of motivation to come up with the best possible course of action on their own.

What the poster said was “drilling on test prep”, which in many cases is what schools do to teach to the test. Schools do this on a regular basis. They spend time talking about things like test format and hammer away at sample questions. How many times in school did you cram for a test only to have it simply go away after the test?

The idea is, or should be, that the test should measure what our goals are in educating our children.

The fact that teachers have to take away from the limited time available to have children drill (cram) for the test would not mean, as the prior poster said, that our future generation would be better educated in the long run.

EDITOR’S NOTE: What about “standardized” testing don’t you understand? You can wallow in all the warm-and-fuzzy anecdotes you want, but if you think D-64’s regular absence from the Top-50/100 ISAT list makes its schools (and, hence, our community and its high-priced, high-taxed homes) more attractive, you’re blowing smoke up your own kilt.

And if you don’t think learning how to take tests and taking sample tests has no value, please explain the whole ACT, SAT, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT etc. prep class industry.

Finally, please direct us to any objective measures of exactly how much of what D-64 kids are taught is retained inter-year and two, three or four years out.

I should clarify that it’s not that d64 doesn’t do test prep at all. They do. They just don’t go overboard at the expense of everything else. One mom on an education forum whose kids go to one of the top Chicago schools talked about how her child didn’t have science or social studies for four months. To me, a high test score just isn’t worth it when all other learning goes out the window. Plus if a teacher is teaching everything the curriculum requires, good test scores should follow.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The idea that a “top Chicago school” would call off science (with or without social studies) for four months in order to do test prep is absurd. But it sounds like you’re stocking up on the PREA Kool-Aid. Just don’t forget your sippy cup.

I’m not stocking up on Kool-Aid, far from it. I said I was outraged at the low costs of the Jefferson after school program and even dismayed at how little we parents are expected to help subsidize extracurricular activities. I was merely pointing out that I don’t think everything the district does is idiotic.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re sure D-64 does many things at an acceptable level. But we have yet to hear any D-64 official even address, much less satisfactorily explain, how we can have the 4th highest paid administrators and the 25th highest paid teachers in the state, yet have our kids perform so unimpressively on the only apples-to-apples statewide testing – all while convincing residents to move along because there’s nothing to see here.

I think finding out what this after school program costs is the right direction for the school district to research.

I think that the topic of teaching to the test is totally off topic or at least tangential to the original point the blogger was attempting to make.

Discussing test scores and teaching to the tests while interesting, is not germaine to the issue of fee structure to elective programs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The problem is that if D-64 were managed better than a card-table lemonade stand, it would already know what the exact cost of the program is. And there already would have been public debates about whether the program should just cover its costs or whether it should charge its customers the true “value” of the services.

The whole education issue, while not directly germane to the after-school costs, is germane to the half-baked management.

You’re right on the point, PW (re: your response to Anon. 5/30 1:18 pm). The question here is not quality of education — although we can debate that — it’s what taxpayers pay for it and how transparent is the purchase.

For years, the education establishment has made the intelleectualy lazy link between spending and quality of education. “If you want better schools, we have to spend more!” We’re way past the point of diminishing returns.

Also for years there was an assumption that teachers accept lower pay than they could get in other careers. Today that is not true, especially in Park Ridge. Pay is competitive, all the more so when you include pensions and benefits, plus school vacation time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: And let’s not forget the job security of “tenure” and the inability to off-shore teaching jobs to Mexico or the Philipines.

FWT…substitute educators, teachers and education for city workers, staff and city services. And whatdoytyathink?

Same church different pew.

See a trend?

Here is hoping the little momentum we see at 505 starts to catch fire and starts to show through at D64 and beyond.

And thanks PW for the effort to look up the skirts of the cloaked at D64.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Transparency can be a contagious thing, but it has to start somewhere – sometimes with something as simple as pointing out the obvious, like: the emperor’s buck nekkid.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You’ve earned the “privilege” of being treated as SPAM, Turk. Take a hike.