Back on August 11 we published a post about the lack of transparency at…where else…Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.

Unofficial motto: “Don’t ask, cuz we won’t tell.”

We wrote about how D-64 Super!-intendent – because that’s pretty much how Board president Tony Borrelli and fellow Board members gushed about her when the Board gave her a $250,000+ contract extension and raise a few months ago – Laurie Heinz got herself a propaganda army she named the “Community Relations Council”(the “CRC”) for its avowed purpose of “strengthening relationships between the schools and local residents” in order to facilitate “a free-flowing dialogue and make sure everyone’s voice is heard.”

D-64 Minister of Disinformation Bernadette Tramm must have earned combat pay for that folderol.

Anybody who pays attention to what passes for representative government at D-64 knows by now that if there’s any “free-flowing dialogue” over there, it’s occurring only when the Board scurries off into its regular secretive closed session meetings, the proceedings of which it hides and keeps hidden from the public. For us ordinary Park Ridge residents/taxpayers, on the other hand, “free-flowing dialogue” most often consists of “talking to the hand” of Heinz and the Board collective.

According to Super!-Heinz, there were almost 40 applicants for the CRC, 19 of which were chosen and identified for the first time in a Sept. 16 posting on the D-64 website – one day after the CRC’s first meeting was held. Just chalk that timing up to D-64’s version of the “it’s-better-to-ask-for-forgiveness-than-permission” school of non-transparency and non-accountability.

And this being the D-64 Star Chamber, the only thing that has been revealed about the 19 successful applicants so far appears to be their names:

Marlene Arteta, Chris Bauer, Anne Camarano, Mariana Eguren-Cosma, Jeff Flyke, Kathleen Kornely, Terry Krahl, Dale Lasky, Robert Leurck, Maureen McGuire, Annette Miller, Sheri Roche, Philip Salemi, Rob Schoenstedt, Franco Scimeca, Paul Sheehan, Michael Shields, Jennifer Steurer and Kara Vormittag.

Because of D-64’s pro-secrecy/anti-transparency obsession, the qualifications of these 19 individuals (as well as the other 20 or so unsuccessful applicants) are nowhere to be found on the District’s website or in any of its Board materials for the past several Board meetings. That’s in stark and ugly contrast to the transparency of the process by which the Park Ridge City Council appoints residents to its boards and commissions – where every single application is posted on the City’s website days before those applicants are interviewed by the Mayor’s Advisory Council, in meetings open to the press and the public, prior to the recommendation of the selected applicants to the mayor and the full Council’s voting on them in meetings open to the press and the public.

We also can’t find anything in the D-64 Board’s minutes, agendas or meeting materials to suggest that the Board had any role whatsoever (even its typical rubber-stamping one) in the appointments of the favored 19. That suggests that the whole CRC is Heinz’s personal rodeo, although we assume Tramm was whispering sweet somethings into Heinz’s ear during the selection process.

Meanwhile, unsuccessful applicants like Watchdog reader/commentator George Korovilas were left scratching their heads about why they weren’t chosen, although only Korovilas publicly expressed his skepticism of the process and/or selection criteria in a comment to the 08.11.15 post on 09.15.15 @ 11:03 a.m.:

I think that maybe PUBDOG might be onto something with this NEW council created by the superintendent. I was offended that PUBDOG would suggest that only YES men would be put on this council, since I applied to be on it. I, along with others that believe there is good and bad with what the district is doing and had NO INTENTION of being YES people, have been denied a spot on this council. I hope that I am wrong but it looks like I might owe PUBDOG an apology for his original take on this Council.

Poor guy: he thought the selection process would be (to quote the late Jay McMullen, husband of then-Chicago mayor Jane Byrne) “on the legit.” As if anything of consequence D-64 does is ever totally “on the legit” or even totally out-in-the-open.

Korovalis clearly overlooked how his vocal beefing about the District’s ongoing refusal to provide D-64 parents with itemized billing statements of the expenses that comprise the annual student fees made him a persona non grata with Heinz and the Board. His chances of getting appointed to anything at D-64 more important than Franklin School copy machine volunteer are slim and none.

But back to the CRC.

It’s supposed to meet three times a year for a couple of hours at a crack, with these 19 members serving for two years.

And according to Heinz’s post on the D-64 website, CRC members “will be building their understanding of current District 64 issues” – as spoon-fed to them by Heinz and Tramm, of course – which those CRC members will, in turn, spoon-feed to the community.  That’s the way non-transparent, non-accountable governmental bodies stay that way: by controlling the flow of information to that public.

And Heinz also wants CRC members to “provide her with feedback about what misconceptions the community might have about what is or isn’t happening” in D-64. [Emphasis ours.]

“Misconceptions” like the continuing underachievement of D-64’s students despite the ever-increasing costs to the taxpayers?

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