Just following the thread: Wallace’s bonus a year ago was for making progress on his goals……………in my world you don’t get bonuses unless you achieve the goals. Of course it is hard to achieve goals when you have spent your time spinning your way out of responsibility for sports programs at South(football and rogue teacher) and West(soccer) getting out of control, the kitchens failing cleanliness tests and teachers average cash compensation at $118k without any visible sign of improving student achievement. He does employ a good spin machine…..maybe that was the goal achieved.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not nearly as good as Bender’s, however. Or maybe the D-64 Board members are just easier to manipulate and/or more profligate than their D-207 counterparts.

@11:23, I’m curious where you got the dirt on the 207 schools. It’s interesting to me how people jump on the negatives without ever acknowledging the positives such as South’s stellar fine arts programs or the Consitution team. I believe the quality of education is still good, especially at South. But if I’m mistaken I’d like to hear more evidence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: South is 1/3 of D-207. Batting .333 will get you a multi-million pro baseball contract, but not much else.

We’re big fans of fine arts programs and the Constitution teams, but they are not the core curriculum by which schools are evaluated and rated.

Two days ago we purchased books etc and a mandatory chromebook for the upcoming school year at Maine South. We spent roughly $750! For books to attend a public school. It is amazing that with all the property taxes that both D207 and D64 collect from the taxpayers that there is only enough money to pay (or overpay) administrators and teachers.

And given the high salaries that these teachers and administrators make-Maine South can only manage a ranking of 27th in the state for high schools-yet our teachers and administrators are among the highest paid in the state. That is a bad return on such an important and expensive investment.

EDITOR’S NOTE: D-207’s per pupil operating cost for the 2010-11 school year (the most recent data we could find) was a shade under $16,000 – times 4 years and you’re at $64,000 of cost per kid. If your total property tax bill is $15,000, approx. $5,000 of that goes to D-207. At that rate, your kid’s 4 years of education will have sucked up almost 13 years of your D-207 taxes. Throw a second kid into South and you can live in Park Ridge for more than a full generation and still be money ahead on the deal.

So stop beefing, because your “investment” in D-207 is working out just fine for you.

Thanks for the math lesson, seriously. If I hear another bitch about the modest fees D207 charges for the value received I might puke.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Freeloaders gonna freeload.

Is there a model for public education where the costs are not collected through property taxes? If not, then all towns / cities would be giving their kids education without paying their fair share, correct?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Try our state university system – no property tax involved at all!

For example, base in-state tuition at U of I/Urbana-Champaign is approx. $15,000 (v. approx. $30,000 out-of-state). But those who legitimately lack the means can qualify for various aid, scholarships, grants, etc., thereby reducing the costs to them.

As for your closing question, we can’t answer it because it’s not lucid.

But U. of I. does not pay any State of Illinois property taxes; nor does Northwestern University. So they own a ton of property and don’t have to pay tax, that would increase the burden on everyone else. So their education costs are being subsidized in some fashion, Plus I think that State Universities do get part of the State of Illinois 5% tax, although I could be wrong about that. If they do receive a subsidy, your argument would be less valid.

EDITOR’S NOTE: And neither do D-207 or D-64 pay property taxes. So they own their own property and don’t have to pay tax.

But if it makes you feel better, let D-207 and D-64 property taxpayers foot the bill for 1/3 of that they currently pay to those two districts – with the students paying tuition for the remaining 2/3.

Dog, sorry about the late post on this topic, but I think we’re missing the big picture and/or main issue here. The salaries and property taxes are out of control and there is something seriously wrong with second grade teachers making 110k plus. What we’re missing is the long term impact of the board’s actions on pensions and ultimately future taxpayers for years to come. The reality is these issues are not being addressed whatsoever by the board. We can scream all we want about taxes and teacher’s salaries, but unless there is some serious pension reform we’re wasting space on your blog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sorry, anon, but YOU’RE missing the point. While pension reform IS the single most important economic issue facing Illinois, the pension obligation re someone making $60K is a lot less than re someone making $100K. So while the Illinois General Assembly is diddling itself on pension reform, our local school boards are mindlessly exacerbating the problem by raising the pay that adds to those pension obligations.

If 60K is the goal here is an idea…..term limits!! Let’s just say that you can only teach 10 years. If that is the value we put on teaching and experience let’s say 10 years and that’s it!! Cause I got new for ya….you are not gonna find a teacher who is in their 20th year of teaching and OK with 60K, especially after “pension reform” is agreed upon.

By the way, after this nirvana of pension reform, do the politicians actually put the money they committed to in the system or do they get to keep stealing it???

EDITOR’S NOTE: Are you just being stupid, or are you attempting to be controversial? (If the latter, try putting a smiley face at the end of the stupid statement so we’ll know.)

Nobody’s suggesting $60,000 is, or should be, “the goal here.” On the other hand, $60,000 is really $80,000 or $90,000 when you factor in the 8-9 month work year teachers have. And let’s not forget the practical immunity from (a) being fired; (b)having one’s employer move to Mexico; and (c) having one’s services outsourced to India.

Actually, we find it extremely ironic that you seem to want teachers to be paid more but have their pensions “reformed” – when the current defined benefit, consitutionally-guaranteed pension system ostensibly was designed for the exact opposite goal of providing a better-than-average pension as compensation for lower pay.

And if you want to see a lot of darn good, highly-committed teachers working for less than mercenary wages and benefits, look no further than the parochial school systems.

Good morning PWD,

This is more for the Mayor as I know you both will read it. Been meaning to ask; Jim Hock was terminated over a year ago, since then his picture remains on the opening page of the City’s web site. The only thing that was done upon his departure was they somewhat “darkened” the images so it is more difficult to see. The City has an IT department, why not fix this?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, this should be more for the City Manager and whatever staff member(s) draw paychecks to, among other things, maintain the City’s website.

I guess I should have put a smiley face after my nirvana comment as well. You two sarcastic comments in one post.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not sure what you mean by “You two sarcastic comments in one post,” but go with the smiley face in the future. We get enough “serious” stupid and uninformed comments that we can use all the help we can get in distinguishing those from the merely sarcastic ones.

I won’t presume to say how what salary a second grade teacher “should” make because as a matter of principle I believe compensation should be agreed upon by employee and employer.

The problem here is that the employers are the school board and they don’t negotiate the salaries, instead just automatically increasing them.

So, “should” a second grade teacher make $110,000? Seems like a healthy salary to me, but my bigger issue is that the salary goes up by +2-3% every year.

School board members: Please pay attention to the fact that your constituents’ salaries don’t go up automatically, but their property tax bills do.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Exactly!

Whenever you have tens of applications for every job opening, waiting lists of applicants for future openings, and virtually nobody leaving for comparable employment elsewhere, you can be pretty darned sure that the combination of pay, benefits and working conditions is well above “market” rates. And when D-64 administrators are the 4th highest paid, and the teachers the 25th highest paid – without any comparably-ranked student performance and achievement – you can be dead-bang certain of it.

The same goes for police and firemen.

In a way I can understand how teachers’ unions and school district bureaucrats get the school boards to wave through teacher salary increases based on “doing it for the children” and fear of looking anti-education or anti-child. School board members need not fear these accusations, but they do.

BUT: How can this fear possibly apply to administrators’ salaries? It seems to me there is a huge opportunity to cut back on those costs — and few taxpayers would complain. At minimum it would be an illuminating public policy discussion.

EDITOR’S NOTE: There are several reasons why school board members wouldn’t have the courage to say “no” to teachers OR administrators.

The most likely one might be – for those school board members with children already in the schools or soon entering them – fear of retaliation by teachers and/or administrators against the school board members’ kids. For years we have heard how intimidated many parents are when it comes to simply complaining about an individual teacher unless they think they can get their kid away from that teacher – so think about what kind of trepidation might be felt by a school board member who risks ticking off ALL teachers and ALL administrators by rejecting their wage and benefit demands.

As best as we can speculate, the second most common reason – and the most common one for those board members without kids already in, or soon to be in, the school system – is a lack of the intellectual strength and circumspection to realize, understand and act on the fact that teachers and administrators are primarily in that line of work for the same thing most other people are in their lines of work: the money, benefits, working conditions, etc. Mother Teresas, they ain’t – and, frankly, nobody should expect them to be. But at the same time, that requires that board members not treat them and their demands with the kind of reverence accorded MT.

And the third most common reason is simple herd mentality: it’s easier to go along to get along than to actually question what you’re being told, think for yourself, and then stand up and take a stand against the herd.

“…… For years we have heard how intimidated many parents are when it comes to simply complaining about an individual teacher unless they think they can get their kid away from that teacher – so think about what kind of trepidation might be felt by a school board member who risks ticking off ALL teachers and ALL administrators by rejecting their wage and benefit demands”.

Oh my god!!! DO you have anything besides “we have heard”?? Are there any instances where retaliation against a student has been documented based on a parent or board member complaint??

It is amazing that in a period of a month you have called 14 year out for cowardly behavior and now you opine that grown ups (parents and apparently some elected officials) are so afraid and intimidated by teachers that they do not report things and throw money at them. And it appears you almost justify it….”think about the trepidation…..”

Problem is there is not any documentation that this has ever happened.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course there’s no “documentation” of this stuff – unless it resulted in an lawsuit being filed, there is no public record because of (a) student privacy laws, and (b) these matters being dealt with/settled in private (and/or approved by the board in closed session) with the affected parents usually agreeing to confidentiality.

For example, over the years there have been a number of special education cases where where D-64 settled – rather than go to a due process hearing – by giving parents of special ed. kids various benefits (e.g., extra hours of private special ed. tutoring, placement in private schools, etc.) at taxpayer expense, under a contractual non-disclosure obligation so that other parents wouldn’t find out when, why and how the District bought its way out of problems.

If it eases your bleeding heart, we consider the “cowardly” 14-year olds as less culpable than parents and board members who allow themselves to be intimidated by teachers and administrators, or other board members. But the “trepidation” is no less a factor that can’t be ignored, even if it is no excuse for elected officials abdicating the public trust invested in them.

SO: The solution could be to elect to the school boards more residents who don’t happen to also have children enrolled in the schools. They have skin in the game, too.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Without having given it much thought, if we could dictate the ideal composition of the two local public school boards we would eliminate parents of current students (even though Tony Borrelli, the father of 2 D-64 students, is easily our favorite D-64 board member in recent memory); at least 2 of the 7 would be parents of children currently in private/parochial schools or alumni of those schools; another 2 would be people who are beyond their child-rearing years and haven’t had kids in the District’s schools for at least 10 years; 2 more would be child-less adults; and the remaining 1 could be a wild-card.

Would that solve all problems? Of course not. But it would reduce the likelihood of Board members’ special interests unduly influencing the decision-making process.

But since that kind of mix cannot be mandated, we’ll stick with the current electoral process and continue to hope for the best.

So there is no public record at all…..no proof that it is happening…. but you know that it is happening. Geee……that sounds like voter fraud to me!!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course there are public records. There should be classroom (or school) transfer records, expenditures for placements in places like The Cove School, etc. But just like we’ve seen with the confidentiality provision of departed METRA CEO Alex Clifford, a public body can cut deals with people and keep at least some parts of the deal confidential by contract. And when you add in the student privacy laws, that information is effectively unobtainable by the average taxpayer.