Yesterday we talked about showing the door to the incumbent Maine Twp. High School District 207 Board members because they have demonstrated they can’t, or won’t, do the job the students and taxpayers deserve. Today we shift gears to the contested race for three 4-year seats on Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.
Actually, those seats aren’t all that “contested” because there are only four candidates vying for the three seats. So the only suspense is finding out who is going to be the odd man out among incumbent Tony Borrelli and challengers Greg Bublitz, Mark Eggemann and Tom Sotos.
If the Park Ridge Education Association (the “PREA”) – the teachers union – has its way, that odd man will be Eggemann, which would be reason enough to endorse him.
That because the PREA exists solely to put more money and better benefits in the pockets of its members, while avoiding as much accountability as it can get away with. And the PREA has gotten away with that for years while student performance has stagnated or even declined compared to higher-scoring districts in Glenview, Northbrook and those other suburban communities with which Park Ridge competes for new residents.
Worse yet, D-64’s under-performance may be contributing to the marked decline in the performance and ranking of Maine South, which dropped a dozen slots in its student performance rankings in just three years!
Eggemann is the husband of Maine Twp. Republican Committeewoman (and Park Ridge Library Board member) Char Foss-Eggemann. He also served as the late Mayor Dave Schmidt’s 2013 campaign manager. Both of those facts rub certain people – the Kool-Aid drinkers who prefer go-along-to-get-along government – the wrong way.
He’s also the PREA’s worst nightmare: somebody who thinks for himself and isn’t easily intimidated.
Eggemann sounds uncompromising in his demand for higher measurable student achievement, and unabashedly dismissive of the District’s nonsensical “teaching the whole child” instead of “teaching to the [standardized] tests” alibi for its low rankings. Even more notably, he is the only candidate demanding complete transparency from the District and the Board – including dragging the teacher contract negotiations out of the closet and into the sunlight, where the taxpayers and the media alike can see and hear not only the PREA’s demands but also the District’s responses.
Not surprisingly, two of Eggemann’s opponents are PREA sock puppets.
Bublitz is a former teacher and current School District 63 administrator. And for good measure, his wife is a D-64 teacher and PREA member, which would appear to create both a conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety in dealing with any systemic teacher issues. Bublitz is so much the PREA’s boy that its president, Andy Duerkop, didn’t hesitate to admit that the PREA recruited Bublitz to replace departing two-term PREA cabana boy/beyatch John Heyde, who engineered the current sweetheart contract for the PREA back in 2012.
According to Duerkop, Sotos also sought PREA support. So when a successful challenge got Bublitz’s running mate, Kristin Gruss, tossed off the ballot, the PREA adopted Sotos as its unofficial Plan B. Which is why you’ll see his and Bublitz’s signs paired up in front yards all over town, except where some sly devils have placed Bublitz’s sign on one lot line and Sotos’ sign on the opposite lot line to make it look like they’re on different properties altogether.
Busted.
While we are tempted to suggest that voters tired of the D-64 same old same old might want to consider giving Eggemann the “bullet” – i.e., voting only for him rather than diluting that vote with votes for his competition – we believe Tony Borrelli deserves another shot at proving he can be the kind of thoughtful and courageous people’s representative we endorsed back in April 2011.
On one hand, Borrelli has delivered for the taxpayers on a number of occasions during his first term – like with his “no” vote on the current teacher contract, his “yes” vote for residency checks, his “yes” vote for videotaping Board meetings. But seemingly just as frequently, he has stiffed those same taxpayers with his “yes” votes on “free” Chromebooks, on a sweetheart contract for newly-minted Supt. Heinz, and an even more ridiculous contract extension for business manager Becky Allard.
And most importantly of all, the educational performance of D-64 students seems dead in the water.
Assuming Dathan Paterno pulls his head out of his anti-Common Core whatsit and actually starts representing all those taxpayers who aren’t afflicted with obsessive/compulsive right-wing ideological pathology but who, instead, just want the educational quality they’re paying so dearly for, a Borrelli/Paterno/Eggemann alliance might be able to inspire some independent thought and civic-mindedness from a cipher like Bob Johnson.
And without a Heyde on the Board for the first time in a dozen years, maybe even a blind squirrel like Vicki Lee might find an occasional acorn.
But the first step is electing Eggemann and re-electing Borrelli.
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