Those of you who chose to attend last night’s Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District Board meeting instead of the Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting witnessed something that has been extremely rare until now, but hopefully will become much less rare in the future:  a small group of citizens actually challenged the secrecy and unaccountability of Supt. Philip Bender and a majority of the D-64 Board.

Recent D-64 Board candidate Marshall Warren, Charlene Foss, and a handful of supporters didn’t cause those D-64 officials to cower in a corner, or promise to change their secretive and unaccountable ways.  To the contrary, Bender and certain Board members, clearly unaccustomed to being vigorously questioned by people who actually seemed to know both their legal rights and the relevant school issues, were confrontational from start to finish.

But with every question from Warren and Foss – whether about substantive issues like why the Board recently gave certain employees 2.5% across-the-board salary increases and why the percentage and amount of those raises wasn’t even discussed or announced publicly before being voted on, or about procedural issues like why the Board didn’t post its 105-page board meeting packet of materials on the District’s website until the morning of the meeting – it became increasingly clearer that a new dynamic had been introduced into a public body whose members, like typical old-line Chicago pols, have not wanted to hear from “somebody nobody sent.”

Without the Board’s “alpha” member (president John Heyde) controlling the meeting, it fell primarily to Bender and Board member Scott Zimmerman to quasi-answer/avoid the questions posed by Warren, Foss, et al.  Not surprisingly, several questions brought variations of the historically successful, typically bureaucratic “you just don’t understand.”

For example, when Foss challenged the closed-session discussion of the recent salary increases for the non-union personnel, Board member Sharon Lawson – reportedly with a straight face – insisted that closed session was required because the Board was deciding on individual raises based on individual performance evaluations.  When Foss observed that it just didn’t “make sense” that each of those “individual” evaluations could result in everyone getting the same 2.5% raise, and followed that observation with questions about pension funding, Bender cut off the discussion with an invitation for Foss to meet with him and D-64 business manager Rebecca Allard so that they could “explain” things to her.

We suspect Foss is too savvy to get suckered into that kind of private meeting, where everything is “off the record” and conversations can too easily be spun, disputed and outright denied.  And, given the nature and incisiveness of her questioning, we doubt Bender would enjoy being grilled by Foss about how he can justify what we understand to be his own 2.5% pay raise when D-64’s administrative personnel already are the 4th highest paid in the State of Illinois, yet the District can’t figure out how to pay to air condition Carpenter School so that the kids don’t get sent home for “heat days.”

More importantly, however, explanations by public bodies of what they are doing, and why, belong in public forums rather than in one-off variations on those “closed sessions” so dear to the hearts of Bender, the Board and bureaucrats everywhere.

Warren served up his own dose of agita by advocating for the transparency that would come from the Board approving his videotaping of the Board’s next meeting.  Warren noted how resident George Kirkland had resolutely volunteered his services for videotaping City Council meetings over the past two years at virtually no cost to the City. 

The reaction from Bender and most of the Board could best be described by envisioning a fight scene from the 1960s Adam West “Batman” television series:

“Pow!”

Despite new Board member Tony Borrelli’s reasserting his previously-expressed support for videotaping, Zimmerman opined that videotaping was “against school board policy.”  If true, then “school board policy” violates the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”), which expressly permits the private videotaping of public meetings (735 ILCS 120/2.05) subject only to that videotaping not unreasonably interfering with “the overall decorum and proceeding of the meeting.” (735 ILCS 120/2.05 and 1975 Ill. Att’y Gen. Opinion 17).  

Showing an ignorance (or abhorrence?) of IOMA equal to Zimmerman’s, Bender wanted a legal opinion about videotaping from D-64’s counsel because he was “extremely uncomfortable that someone could manipulate and edit a video.” 

Sorry, Phil, but neither IOMA nor the Illinois Atty. General’s office shares your concerns.  And Borrelli already told you about how YouTube video files are difficult to alter.  Consequently, we highly doubt that somebody would bring in the wizards from Industrial Light & Magic to morph your videotaped image into Darth Vader’s – even if you do seem to embrace the Dark Side when it comes to transparent, accountable and fiscally-responsible school district governance. 

Frankly, we’re hoping that Warren will show up at the next meeting with videotape rolling so that we can see – literally see, via that videotape – whether Bender and the Board are willing to invite an IOMA lawsuit against the District by barring him and his camera.

Last night Warren and Foss stepped up to the plate, big-time, in challenging the secretive and fiscally-irresponsible way D-64 has been doing business for the past two decades.  They didn’t back down, and they truly earned the applause they received from the small audience of parents and taxpayers. 

And they deserve applause and support in their endeavors from those of us who believe in honest, transparent, accountable and fiscally-responsible government.

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