A new teachers union contract is supposedly being negotiated over at Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64.  You’d be hard-pressed to prove it, though, given how typically stingy D-64 is with information concerning things that it can’t toot its own horn about.

Given the still-tough economy and the high level of compensation D-64 teachers and administrators already are receiving – last May, the Chicago Sun-Times pegged them as the 25^th and 4^th highest compensated, respectively, in all of Illinois – you might think that our elected School Board members would want to let the taxpayers know that they are committed to holding the line on compensation and benefits (i.e., pensions), especially with the District having recently identified $20 million+ in high-priority capital “needs.”

But if that’s what you thought, you’d be very wrong.

From what we can tell, the District’s minister of (dis)information, Bernadette Tramm, Supt. Philip Bender and Board president John Heyde are working together to keep the entire teachers negotiation process under a cone of silence.  So not only don’t the taxpayers know how the negotiations are going, we don’t know if those negotiations are even “going” at all. 

Kind of a variation on Brad Pitt’s admonition in “Fight Club”: The first rule of teacher negotiations is, you don’t talk about teacher negotiations. 

During budget talks last July, the District already was anticipating a FY 2011-12 increase of 6.28% in teacher and administrator salaries, totaling approximately $2.46 million; and a 20.71% increase in corresponding benefits, totaling approximately $1 million.  And if we recall the District’s policies and procedures correctly, once the District gets past a certain date (in early March?), its staffing for the next school year is basically locked in.  So if negotiations extend past that date, the District loses the leverage of potential layoffs when bargaining with the teachers union over salary and benefit increases.

All of that might explain the deafening silence on when those negotiations are going to commence.  It might also explain the rumor that District negotiators Heyde and private-sector union attorney/Board member Pat Fioretto don’t want any other Board members looking over their shoulders.

If you’re trying to hide in plain sight, you don’t want anybody looking too closely.

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