Park Ridge – Niles School District 64 recently swore in four new board members: Pat Fioretto, Russ Gentile, Sharon Lawson and Eric Uhlig, all of whom ran uncontested with the endorsement of the General Caucus.  Those last two facts virtually guarantee that none of them have any inviolate principles or other “sharp edges” that might prevent them from going along to get along. 

Given that sad “pedigree,” we don’t hold out much hope that any of them will help construct a “new majority” of the school board which will be inspired to bring some much-needed transparency and accountability to what historically has been the most opaque, cost-ineffective and self-congratulatory arm of Park Ridge local government.  If you don’t believe us, just take a look at the District’s website, http://www.d64.org/, basically a collection of self-serving factoids and quasi-analysis which predictably makes the District look like a much better-run organization than it has ever been.

For example, check out the “District Finances” section.  The “ISBE Profile” section brags about the fact that the District has received the Illinois State Board of Education’s “Financial Recognition” rating – the highest rating offered by the ISBE – since 2007, when the voters approved the whopping multi-million tax increase referendum just a couple of years after the District snuck through $5 million in non-referendum working cash bonds (“WCB”s) by telling the Big Lie: That those bonds were needed to combat delayed real estate tax revenues.  In fact, those WCBs were used to free up those belated tax revenues so that the latter funds could partially replenish the District’s depleted fund balances.

Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of the fact that those fund balances were depleted during the first half of this decade by the financial bungling of Superintendant Sally Prior and her fellow high-ranking administrators, which was rubber-stamped during that time by Caucus-anointed school board members Steve Lieber, Barbara Jones, Jane Meagher, Joe Baldi, Rich Brendza, Sue Runyon, Dean Krone, Steve Latreille, Christina Heyde, Ares Dalianis, Chris Mollett, Ron James and Marty Joyce – or that the District desperately needed those multi-millions of dollars generated by the WCBs and tax increases to prevent the ISBE from stepping in to manage the District’s finances because of several years of the District’s receiving the ISBE’s unfavorable “Financial Early Warning” and “Financial Watch” ratings. 

That’s not to say that those folks are bad people.  They aren’t.  But with the exception of Krone’s one brief shining moment (when he suggested, unsuccessfully, that any leftover “New Emerson” construction funds be rebated to the taxpayers rather than rolled into the general education fund), they also showed in no uncertain terms that they lacked the understanding, the ability and/or the courage to oversee the District’s management by its administrator in ways that maximized educational quality within the constraints imposed by the tax caps that were instituted way back in 1994.  And they also displayed a clear lack of understanding, ability and/or courage to tell the taxpayers the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the practical results of their stewardship of the District.

That’s why, although presiding over the District’s relatively straight-line decline into financial crisis, they regularly patted each other on the back even as they caved in the face of a brief strike by the teacher’s union, and even before they began giving Prior all the salary increases that have pushed her compensation beyond $215,000 (as best as we can tell).  Meanwhile, the District’s budget has grown even larger than the City’s.

Want to find out the state of District 64 (apparently its version of the State of the Union, or the State of the State)?  Go to, and click on, the “About Us” heading.  Then click on the “State of the District” [pdf] and you’ll find it…as of Fall, 2006!  That’s not the level of candor, or even the level of attention to detail, that inspires a whole lot of confidence.

But when it comes to student performance, we couldn’t find anything on the District’s website that showed us where the District ranks among the other districts in the Greater Chicagoland area in terms of ISAT scores.  We’re guessing that’s because, as best as we can tell from the ranking information that is available from other sources (such as the Chicago Sun-Times), District 64’s performance on those tests is lackluster at best…although you’ll never get the administration or board to acknowledge it: When they can’t avoid the topic, their mantra is always one of the many variations on the theme “we don’t teach to the test.”

Can’t you just hear Prior or the designated District 64 spokesman sneer (in her/his best “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” bandito voice): “Test scores?  We don’t need no stinking test scores”?

The District’s website also furnishes a variety of information about compensation of teachers and administrators, but it does so by nameless categories, tables and fictional examples (“Teacher A” and “Teacher B”) that really don’t tell the taxpayers much at all. The simpler and better alternative would be to publish the compensation of each individual teacher and administrator by name – so that the taxpayers can tell exactly to whom they are paying how much for whatever quality and quantity of service each such employee is providing.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that level of transparency and accountability.  District 64 hasn’t provided it yet, and we don’t expect to see it anytime soon.  For the people who run the District, and for the Caucus folks who were instrumental in putting them in office, warm and fuzzy propaganda is always preferred over straight-shooting.