Some day we hope to be able to write something positive about the Board and Administration of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.
Today is not that day.
For those of you who haven’t paid attention to the clown car masquerading as representative government at D-64, this past Monday night the members of the Board of Education marched out of another of their regular and customary closed-session meetings behind president Tony “Who’s The Boss?” Borrelli and collectively gave a giant middle finger to the District’s taxpayers.
First, the Board unanimously voted to give raises to all the administrators for whom Supt. Laurie “I’m The Boss!” Heinz requested them. While 1% raises based on little more than an increase in the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) are stupid and irresponsible, the reported $48,763 cost is barely a rounding error to the District’s $70 million-plus budget. By D-64’s profligate standards, that’s almost frugal.
And according to the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate article about that meeting (“Raises approved for 19 District 64 administrators,” August 23), it came with a refreshingly honest admission from Ms. Heinz:
“Our [administrators] don’t have a union; they don’t have tenure. They have me to advocate for them. So that is what I’m here to do today.”
We’re sure glad she cleared that up because, for those of you keeping score, we now know that the administrators have Heinz advocating for them; and the teachers have their union, the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”), advocating for them. Those advocates have done quite well for their constituents, judging by the high-pay-without-performance they enjoy.
We taxpayers, however, are left with the likes of “Boss” Borrelli, vice-president Scott Zimmerman, Dathan Paterno, Vicki Lee, Bob Johnson, Tom Sotos and Mark Eggemann as our “advocates.”
With apologies to both President Obama and ISIS, these school board members are the real “junior varsity.”
The H-A reports that Heinz initially wanted a 1.9% pay boost for her administrators, plus something called a “market adjustment performance bonus.” That 1.9%, however, was just for optics – a wink-and-nod number contrived in one of those weekly closed-session meetings to give the Board some faux bragging rights about how tough it was in beating that 1.9% down to 1% that might fool the rubes.
The set-up for that Kabuki occurred back on August 8 when “Who’s The Boss?” and Zimm first called for CPI-based raises – even though the national CPI had risen only 0.8% over last year and the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the Chicago area’s CPI as having actually fallen by 0.1% over the past 12 months.
If “Who’s The Boss” and Zimm were on the legit, that would have meant no CPI-based raises.
But of course they weren’t.
So when residents Steve Schildwachter and Mike Reardon challenged the Board on such raises without clearly documented performance justifications, the Board spent almost 15 minutes ripping them with a variety of self-serving, undocumented ipse dixit remarks about the Board’s and Administration’s many accomplishments – all of which you can watch on the meeting video, starting at the 1:57:00 mark and running through the 2:15:00 mark.
We might blow some holes in those Board remarks in a future post, but for now we’ll stop and shift our focus from the undercard to Monday night’s main event: Borrelli’s announcement that there’s a new 4-year contract with the PREA.
Don’t expect to hear about its terms or actually read its text anytime soon, when it might actually matter – like before the Board approves it.
According to another August 23 H-A article (“’Tentative’ contract reached for District 64 teachers, board president says”) “Who’s The Boss?” stated that the contract will not be released to the public (a/k/a, the taxpayers) until after it is approved by both the PREA and the School Board, which is expected to occur next month.
According to Borrelli, the reason for that isn’t any legal requirement but merely the District’s longstanding practice of not informing the taxpayers about teacher contracts before each such contract becomes a fait accompli.
“Who’s The Boss?” thinks the taxpayers he claims to represent can’t fully appreciate the new contract, negotiated over a seven-month period in secretive closed sessions, without first having an understanding of “all the issues involved,” “the full background of it,” and “the full gist of it” – all the insights which he, his Board and the PREA prevented the taxpayers from acquiring by holding all those negotiations in closed session.
If pressed, Borrelli will insist that those closed sessions aren’t his fault, that the requirement was put into the last contract that he voted against.
But the way to tell whether Borrelli is full of Bolognese on this point – and trying to hide the new contract’s terms so that the taxpayers can’t see what a bad deal it is before it’s approved – is whether there’s a similar closed-session negotiation requirement in this new contract that will bind and gag the future board that negotiates the next contract in 2020.
By then, Borrelli will likely have left the Board and disclaimed any ownership of the high-priced mediocrity (relative to comparable districts, not to the state average and schools in Franklin Park, Calumet City or Effingham) that he and his clown-car passengers have foisted on the District’s taxpayers and students. And by then we expect Heinz to have leveraged her entry-level superintendent position here into a better gig elsewhere, presumably closer to her Vernon Hills home.
That’s why we’re willing to bet the “Boss” one crisp new $1 bill that this latest contract contains another cone-of-silence negotiations provision, along with the same old, same old automatic annual step and lane raises that reward teachers merely for continuing to show up and take some grad courses that may or may not have any measurable effect on their job performance.
Of course, that’s just speculation because the “Boss” and his Oui-Street Board don’t even try to conceal their contempt for the intelligence and public spiritedness of their constituents – especially the more than two-thirds of Park Ridge households who pay more than two-thirds of D-64s taxes but don’t even have a kid in D-64 schools – by doing something as simple and honest as publishing the new contract NOW.
Which is why they so brazenly give us a Rahm Emanuel salute:
Except with a full complement of middle-finger joints.
To read or post comments, click on title.
17 comments so far
As I was reading the post I started thinking about just how Rahm-ish what Borrelli et al. are doing is. The picture nailed it.
The way these school board people think and act defies understanding or belief. It’s as if their minds and bodies have been taken over by alien oligarchs from another galaxy.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Or just terrestrial oligarchs from Russia or the Middle East.
Why shoudn’t teachers get automatic raises? Why should it matter if only 1/3 of residents have kids in school? Are we measuring police and fire salaries by how many people use these services? No, we take it for granted that they are publicly supported for the public good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Why should anyone get automatic raises?
This reminds me of Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare: “You’ve got to vote for it before you can read it.”
What kind of people have we elected to represent us?
Dr. Heinz, I WATCH THESE MEETING VIDEOS and I am well aware of your flim-flammery about how the district has failed on your watch. Tell us how any thing we are doing is better than, and more successful than, what they are doing in Wilmette, Glenview, Northbrook, Lake Bluff, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, etc.?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Good point: improved performance in scrimmages and intramurals is a good thing, but its the Ws and Ls against outside competition that are the best measures of achievement.
In hindsight I am disappointed that this blog endorsed Borrelli for re-election because that is the only reason I voted for him. He acts like a smarter version of former mayor Frimark, who would hide whatever he could from the public until he got caught, than would lie about it or blame somebody else. Borrelli does not have to worry about lying becasue nobody on that school board challenges him.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Our endorsement of Borrelli for re-election in our 03.31.15 post – “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” – was more of an anti-PREA candidate (Greg Bublitz and Tom Sotos) statement. Nevertheless, it has proved to be a big mistake and for that we apologize.
Unfortunately, those are the kinds of Hobson’s Choices we’re stuck with when a majority of candidates for that board are PREA tools or windsocks.
In response to Editor: Why should anyone get automatic raises? It’s called economics. If someone is hired to do a job in 2000 and they are still doing that job in 2020 and are being paid the same dollar amount, they are actually bringing home LESS money. Sure, have some performance raises rolled in but you need cost of living adjustments. You cannot think of teachers only as tax problem; they are also people with careers, lives, families. If those in the private sector have the security of cost of living raises, and then of top of that –incentives, performance raises, and commissions why wouldn’t teachers? It’s their livlihood. Students are not “products.” Education is not a business; it is a public good. Yes, we need to measure learning but not solely on the backs of teachers. Ask the teachers — are they being supported in such a way that learning can occur? Does the measure work for all teachers including those teaching children with significant special needs?
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Economics” is paying fair market value for goods or services. That’s why in the real world – not the fantasyland of government employment – employers pay for performance: they are not guarantors of their employees’ buying power. And education IS a “business” in the sense that schools – and the communities they serve – compete for students/residents in the marketplace of educational value v. taxes, as well as with private and parochial schools.
If D-64 teachers, administrators and board members want to blame the stagnant/declining(?) performance on stupid kids and/or parents who aren’t sufficiently engaged in their kids’ studies, or divorced parents/combined families, etc., then let them say so – publicly and loudly! Until they do so, however, the buck stops on the desks of the teachers and the administrators who are making those fat paychecks and gold-standard guaranteed pensions with virtually no performance demands other than showing up, virtually no risk of being fired, and absolutely no risk of their employer packing up and moving to Indiana or Mexico.
What is the increase to the taxpayer on our real estate bill with the decisions that they made for D64?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s a secret.
What is this :
“If D-64 teachers, administrators and board members want to blame the stagnant/declining(?) performance on stupid kids and/or parents who aren’t sufficiently engaged in their kids’ studies, or divorced parents/combined families, etc., then let them say so – publicly and loudly!”
What kind of editor creates arguments that weren’t there? You can’t put words in someone else’s mouth. Sounds like you should lose your job, clearly the performance reviews aren’t in place. Any kind of writer knows that you can’t make arguments that aren’t there.
Also, I’m not a teacher in d64; I teach college writing.
Finally — FAT paychecks?? A first year teacher started at 48k last year. Why is no one grumbling about bus drivers’ salaries or police salaries or sanitation salaries? Why is it teachers that seem to not “deserve” a decent wage for the professional expertise, college degrees and time? Probably because people expect them to be married to men who make the “real money.” It’s not 1955.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Well, “Peter,” you must have missed those previous posts that explained how the pay of a first year D-64 teacher with a mere BA is roughly the equivalent of $72,000/year – because that $48K is for roughly 8 months of work instead of 12 months – received while working in a clean, well-lighted (and heated and air-condtioned) place with no health and safety dangers, with no risk of their employer moving to Indiana or Mexico, with no performance standards by which to be judged, with a constitutionally-guaranteed pension and benefits that would require a bare minimum $2 million-plus 401(k) investment to approximate, and which can be taken by most teachers before age 60.
Which is why it’s the best job in Park Ridge.
I’m a first-time commenter on this blog becuase this latest chapter in the District 64 insult book is the last straw.
I cannot imagine how the voters would let any other branch of local government get away with this kind of arrogant dishonesty when so much money ($50 million/year for 4 y4ars = $200 million?) is involved.
I hope voters remember this in April when current members Johnson, Lee, Paterno and Zimmerman are up for re-election.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Rumor has it that at least 3 of those 4 aren’t planning to run again; and that the PREA will once again field puppet candidates – although more covertly than they did 2 years ago so that voters can’t identify them as easily as they did Bublitz & Gruss (and her replacement, Sotos) in 2015.
teachung is an important job. More important to most than other professions. Many tax payers do not mind funding school capital improvements or pay raises because a better educated society is beneficial to all and more resources and retaining better talent equates to better education.
Stop belly aching and run for the board yourself if you feel your approach is so correct. Or are you not finished dismantling the community from gathering at the library yet to move onto another board. I bet if you were ever elected to the school board (not likely) but suppose lightning struck and you were -you would be a one term “wonder” because nothing you say would improve the schools. You truly are lost simply wanting your tax bill not to go up at any cost. Shameful.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “[T]eachung” is no more important than a lot of jobs. When your house is on fire, or your home is being broken into, or you’ve got dysentery, or your garbage isn’t picked up, or you’ve been indicted for criminal stupidity, you won’t call a teacher because he/she can’t help you. And 8 months of the year, teachers are on vacation.
Not a commodity but a public good.
there is broad agreement among statisticians, psychometricians, and economists that student test scores alone are not sufficiently reliable and valid indicators of teacher effectiveness to be used in high-stakes personnel decisions, even when the most sophisticated statistical applications such as value-added modeling are employed.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No there isn’t.
I agree with anonymous 08.26.16 7:00 am. Borrelli is d64’s Frimark and Heinz is his Schuenke and then Hock. And the rest of his board is like the Bach, Allegretti, Ryan and Carey counncil.
BUt even the Frimark council did not cover up things as important at a $200 million contract.
I have read several criticisms of college and high school rankings in that they are inaccurate measures of the quality of the education received. Here is one such article of many:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/08/10/a-critical-look-at-the-annual-high-school-rankings-by-u-s-news/
Tying teacher salaries to such imperfect rankings that are more to sell magazines than to help foster education would be a mistake.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And we have read criticisms of lobbyists and apologists for public school teachers like Valerie Straus:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/02/there_she_goes_069551.html
Until somebody who isn’t a teacher or administrator engaged in blatant special-interest propaganda comes up with a better measure of teacher performance, we’ll stick with school rankings.
We use teachers for at least 13 years of our most formative years of our lives…others go on and are influenced inspired encouraged taught etc by teachers for many more years.
I can count on my one hand the times I interacted with a fireman police man or even my weekly polite garbage man.
You attempt to put teachers in whose hands our children’s lives are entrusted for numerous hours and days and months on the same level with keeping my garbage from overflowing? Wow. You are mean spirited. If my garbage were to over flow most of us have the skill set to haul the garbage ourselves to a safe dumping ground. The same cannot be said -especially if you based on your insanely idiotic comparisons– if certain people had to teach their children themselves.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We don’t consider expecting all public employees, especially teachers who have that uber-important role you described, to do their jobs economically and accountably as “mean spirited.”
But what does your comment have to do with “Boss” Borrelli and his lemmings refusing to publish the new contract?
Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers
Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/
EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course the Economic Policy Institute would alibi for teachers: it’s a liberal pro-union think tank whose directors include AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and…wait for it…American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García, which two unions represent basically every unionized public school teacher in the country.
http://www.epi.org/about/board/
Time to replace board members who see their jobs as keeping information from their constituents. What is wrong with these people and why do we keep putting them on our school boards.
I noticed that 9 out of the 15 comments to this post had nothing to do with D-64 secrecy about the new teachers contract and, instead, talked about teacher pay. And it looks like all 9 of those comments came from Silly Drivel, Peter and the anonymous commentator whom you pointed out as having commented 3 times yesterday.
On that basis alone I would deduce that all three are School Board members who are trying to distract the discussion from something they know is indefensible (secrecy of contract) to something they think is defensible (arbitrary pay raises).
EDITOR’S NOTE: We noticed that, too, although we did not make your deduction.
It would be funny – and not all that surprising – if Silly Drivel were “Who’s The Boss” Borrelli or one of his lemmings like Tom “P-R-E-A!” Sotos. Or maybe even Heinz playing a little CYA politics.
Why would board members care about commenting on this website? Does their board salary go up if they keep teachers happy? …wait they are elected volunteers…does their tax bill go down if they keep teachers happy? …wait they pay the same tax rate as the rest of us. Could it be they just care and honestly believe (whether their action turns out to be right or wrong) that they are doing what is good for the school district and the community it serves?
Hmmmm
Pubdog you and your bobble heads need to lay off the paranoid Nixon conspiracy theories and do something like run for the board if you think you have all the answers that will give our taxpayers the value they deserve from our schools. Get off your ass stop complaining and try to change it from within.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Why would board members care about commenting on this website?” Because at least a couple/few of them hate the criticism but love the anonymity this site (unlike the FB sites) provides – as demonstrated by all those closed sessions that the public never gets to see or hear.
Nobody who believes in our system of government can “honestly believe…that they are doing what is good for the school district and the community it serves” by negotiating in secret and then keeping the terms of the new contract secret until after it’s approved.
As for doing things for the community, Silly, this editor served 8 years (2 terms, 1997-2005) of elective office on the Park Board and has served 5+ years (2 terms, since 2011) of appointive office on the Library Board. Meanwhile, he wrote and/or edited over 900 posts on this blog and responded to almost as many comments – including most of your silly ones. And he worked on several successful campaigns by candidates for local offices.
So, Silly, your few years on the D-64 Board contributing to its high-priced educational mediocrity and Star Chamber proceedings probably explains why you won’t come out of the closet of anonymity and take a bow.
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