We’ve often criticized the lack of transparency and accountability from the two local taxing bodies who take more money out of Park Ridge property taxpayers’ pockets – approximately 66% combined – than all other taxing bodies cumulatively: Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 and Maine Township High School District 207.

Not surprisingly, both those governmental units have mastered the art of extracting larger and larger amounts of tax dollars from the citizenry while at the same time avoiding accountability for producing lower and lower levels of measurable performance and student achievement.

Nevertheless, both of those school districts have a cadre of committed apologists who respond to any criticism of their favored district in knee-jerk reactionary fashion. You can see prime examples of such reactions in the comments to our 08.29.14 post about D-207’s Board member appointment process – although it should be noted that 28 of those 45 comments existing as of the publishing of this post (8/29 at 10:11, 10:31, 10:47, 10:56 and 11:06 p.m.; 8/30 at 7:10, 7:35, 8:10, 9:22, 9:24, 9:43 a.m. and 5:30, 5:37, 5:43, 6:36, 7:07 and 7:23 p.m.; 8/31 at 8:46 a.m. and 1:58 p.m.; 9/1 at 11:31 a.m. and 12:05, 12:11, 2:34, 2:54 and 3:34 p.m.; and 9/2 at 3:53, 4:24 and 4:40 p.m.) were submitted by the same person.

A shy D-207 Board member, perhaps? Or a Board member’s spouse? Or just a D-207 toady?

Maybe that’s why we got some perverse satisfaction from the story in the current edition of the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, “District 64 to hold Sept. 8 hearing on proposed budget,” (09.03.14), about tonight’s budget hearing scheduled for 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson School, 8200 Greendale Ave., in Niles.

Actually, it wasn’t the hearing itself that provoked a wry smile. It was wondering how the D-64 Board members could maintain straight faces while announcing the opportunity for members of the community to comment on the proposed 2014-15 budget while the District’s grossly overpaid (at close to $220,000 this school year) budget manager, Rebecca Allard, was declining to share the budget’s total revenues and expenses until the hearing itself because “[t]here are adjustments [to the budget] that the board has not seen.”

So much for any interested taxpayers or the local press showing up tonight with any advance knowledge of arguably the two most important components of that budget: revenues and expenses. And in addition to no final revenue and expense totals, Allard also said that the amount the District plans to spend on capital improvements won’t be disclosed before the hearing, either.

Just when we thought D-64 and its Board couldn’t be any less transparent or accountable, they give us a game of 20 questions masquerading as a “public budget hearing”…where even the Board members apparently won’t find out the answers until kick0ff!

That’s exactly what we’d expect out of Allard and the rest of the illusionists who run D-64 like a Vegas magic act, using sleight of hand to convince trusting and/or gullible parents and taxpayers alike that the tens of millions of dollars D-64 shakes them down for each year really do turn into marvelous educational achievement of equivalent or even greater value. Or into a white tiger, depending on whether you attend the matinee or the dinner show.

And, unfortunately, these D-64 Board members – whom we elected and entrusted with the duty to ensure that every tax dollar is spent in the most prudent manner so as to maximize its value to the students whom are its intended beneficiaries – are either bigger rubes than the rest of us in the audience, or they’re actually part of the  act and charged with getting us to look in the wrong direction so that we miss the bureaucrats’ false shuffles and their palming of the Ace of Spades.

Worse yet, the H-A article states that the D-64 Board approved a tentative budget back in July. So it appears that, for the past 30-plus days, Allard and her financial munchkins have been diddling each other when they should have been crunching numbers. Or they’ve actually been engaging in a deliberate effort to bamboozle the taxpayers by keeping enough loose ends and empty places in the budget so that neither the public nor the press can ask informed questions at tonight’s “public” hearing.

And if that means the D-64 Board is kept in the dark, so much the better – because neither the current Board nor any of its predecessor boards have let even pitch-blackness stop them from rubber-stamping whatever the bureaucrats du jour hand them. So even though the taxpayers – and the Board, apparently – have no idea what Allard’s “adjustments” will be tonight, that didn’t stop them from moving the process forward on what the H-A article blithely reports to be salary increases of 4.9%, along with an approximately 4% increase in benefits.

How many of you D-64 taxpayers are getting a 4.9% salary increase this year? How about a 4% benefit increase?

Actually, we’re not exactly sure where that 4.9% comes from, because Page 13 of the latest draft (No. 3) of the “Tentative Budget Review” dated September 8, 2014, states: “The [Educational Fund] salary budget is estimated to increase by $2,304,229 or 5.3% over the previous year’s actual expense.” And Page 15 states that “[s]alaries are anticipated to increase by $99,147 or 3.8%…[as] a result of 3.5% increases for all custodial and maintenance staff.”

As we’ve come to expect when dealing with public sector raises, none of these salary and benefit increases appear to be tied in any understandable way to measurably-improved employee performance, whether that comes in the form of more work performed, or the same amount of work performed in a better way, or some other objective measurement.

We also find it interesting that, according to Page 26 of the Tentative Budget Review, even though Board Policy 4:20 requires the District to maintain “four (4) months of operating expenditures” in reserve, the tentative budget projects year-end 2014-15 reserves of double that.

Can you say “slush fund”?

But our very favorite part of the budget documents is the Executive Summary section titled “Investments in Student Learning 2014-15,” which can be found on Pages 2-4.

It starts out talking about a “five-year plan” named “Journey of Excellence” whose “original planning horizon” has been reached, thereby requiring the creation of “a new multi-year Strategic Plan.” The irony of how the old Soviet Union always implemented five-year plans – which were never successful before being replaced by the next five-year plan that also never hit its marks – apparently was lost on budget-drafter Allard, despite her $220,000 annual compensation.

And judging by the District’s lackluster performance these past five years (and by what might be its adverse effects on Maine South’s rankings), the “Journey of Excellence” might not even qualify as “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

The rest of that Executive Summary is loaded with edu-speak like: “Strategic Plan implementation activities will continue to be embedded within the District’s overall initiatives,” “job-embedded coaching,” “instructional shifts,” “[m]ath intervention for struggling learners,” “curricular pacing guides,” “supplemental learning experiences,” “dynamic and differentiated opportunities,” and what must be the term of the year for 2014-15: “release time.”

George Orwell would be proud of such edu-speak.

And “Winston Smith” would be confused and dismayed by it.

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