We here at PublicWatchdog are committed to public education.  In fact, that’s the principal reason we barbecue the local school boards, administrations and teachers when it looks like our children aren’t getting the quality of education they deserve – and the taxpayers aren’t getting the quality of education they’re paying for.

But today we’re going to take a slightly different tack and turn up the heat a bit on parents as well as the school board and the administrators.  Or, more specifically, on those certain parents of Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 students who reportedly are “boycotting” the District by refusing to pay the fees assessed for things like textbooks, supplies, technology and activities – according to a recent story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate by education reporter Natasha Wasinski (“District 64 parents boycotting school fees, PTA president says,” Nov. 3)

“Boycotting” actually may be a misnomer.  That term suggests the parents are keeping their kids out of, the D-64 schools.  Instead, these parents are sending their kids to school and availing themselves and their children of the textbooks and other accoutrements for which they’ve been charged an average of approximately $260 per student, but without paying for them.

In other words, these “boycotters” are really deadbeats.

Or scofflaws.  Or mooches.  Or parasites.

As reported in the H-A article, as of October 17th the fees for approximately 525 students remained unpaid, for a total of $121,037.  And D-64 is owed another $94,000 for previous years of non-payments.  That’s a total of $215,000+ that should be in D-64’s coffers but is still sitting in the pockets of parents.

In fairness to those parents, many of them claim that their refusal to pay is because the District isn’t giving them an itemized list of the specific items for which they are being charged.  That’s an eminently reasonable request.  Apparently the fee notices sent to the parents do not such provide detail, and it’s also not available on the District’s website.

C’mon, D-64!  What the heck is wrong with you?  How tough can it be to give people an itemized bill for what you’re charging them?

Whether it’s arrogance or stupidity, the idea of charging people a couple hundred bucks without providing chapter and verse of what that covers is unacceptable.  But so is letting the inmates run the asylum by allowing kids to attend school for months, or even years, after the payment of these fees was due.  D-64 may owe the parents an itemized bill, but it also owes the taxpayers diligence in collecting the fees owed.

If that involves denying attendance to the kids of the deadbeats, so be it.  And if that can’t be legally done, and each debt has to be sent to collection instead, so be that, too.

We applaud the approach of resident and parent George Korovilas who, while warning that he won’t pay the fees next year if itemization is not provided, has paid the fees for his three children this year.  Hopefully he won’t have to make good on his warning a year from now.

On the other hand, we question attitudes and comments like the one of resident and parent Max Fadin, who is quoted in the H-A story as finding it “suspicious” that somebody paying $20,000 in taxes also has to pay $1,000 in fees.

First of all, anybody who is paying $20,000 in taxes to D-64 would be paying total property taxes of around $60,000 annually.  We are unaware of even one Park Ridge residence that is taxed that high, so we have to assume that Mr. Fadin is talking about someone whose total property tax bill is $20,000 annually – meaning that about $7,000 of taxes goes to D-64.

A parent paying $1,000 in fees presumably has 4 children in D-64.  Those 4 children are getting around $52,000 worth of education a year for $8,000: $7,000 of taxes and $1,000 of fees.  So that parent is effectively picking the taxpayers’ pockets for $44,000 a year in subsidies.

Taking $44,000 in subsidies AND at the same time stiffing the District for $1,000 in fees is just plain wrong.

And calling it a “boycott” doesn’t make it anything close to right.

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