Last week we wrote about the most recent ISAT test scores and how Park Ridge/Niles Elementary School District 64’s scores at both the elementary and middle school levels don’t seem to be measuring up to our community’s expectations or its financial support. (“Time For Taxpayers To Start Paying Attention To School Dist. 64,” Oct. 31).

We noted how, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, no Dist. 64 school cracked the Top 50 schools in ISAT scoring, losing out to schools from districts that spend on average as much as $4,100/yr per pupil more than we do (Glenview, $14,858 v. Dist. 64 $10,755) and as much as $2,500 less than we do (Western Springs, $8,172).

So when we hear that Dist. 64 has decided to spend $39,000 on a “long-range strategic planning” consultant, we have to wonder just a little bit about where the administration’s and school board’s focus is.  And when we read about the things this consultant is already saying about the District, we wonder even more about the administration’s and board’s judgment. 

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Dist. 64 Planning For Long Term,” Oct. 29), Dist. 64 hired The Cambridge Group, and it sounds as if lead consultant “Dr.” Howard Feddema (why is it that educators with Ph.Ds seem so obsessed with calling themselves “Doctor”?) is already blowing smoke up our collective skirts. 

Feddema wasted no time in praising Dist. 64 for “operating at a high level…financially” even though the District’s newly-abundant cash reserves are not the product of highly-competent “operations” but, instead, of a windfall of tax revenues resulting from last year’s referendum – which helped avert the financial crisis that D-64’s School Board and Administration created with their financially inept “operations” between 1998 and last year.  

So excuse us if we don’t break out the champagne upon reading that Feddema is comparing District 64 to an “organism” that could be viewed (because of its newly-flush financial status) as being at its peak “10” level – but which needs his strategic planning services to avoid the plateau-and-decline tendency of such “organisms.”

We’re also skeptical when we read on the Cambridge Group website about Feddema’s strategic planning model for school districts, which was created by Cambridge Group president and founder “Dr.” William Cook, and that promises to “dramatically improve student learning over time.”  Maybe our skepticism is because “over time” for many consultants tends to mean at some point in time after the consultant’s service contract expires and he/she has moved on to another project.

The dead giveaway for us, however, is when Feddema claims that the success of his work “depends on collaboration among teachers, administrators, board members, parents, and community leaders to identify long-term strategic direction and link that direction to the development of annual operating plans that drive daily practice in schools.”  Spreading responsibility over that many different factions ensures that nobody – and especially not the consultant – can be held accountable if/when the strategic planning falls short of its goals.  

Nevertheless, the District is already set to form its “30-member planning task force” early next year to work with Feddema.  You can bet that task force will be composed primarily of well-meaning but over-matched residents (not unlike the District’s Community Finance Committee) who can be expected to go along to get along with the handful of group “leaders” who are clued into the District’s desired outcomes, even if those outcomes are nothing close to what the District actually needs.

But hiring consultants and rounding up the usual suspects is just what the elected and appointed officials at Dist. 64 need to avoid accountability to the voters and the taxpayers.