If you give a rat’s derriere about the quality of the public education that consumes close to 70% of our property tax dollars, take a few minutes to read Jennifer Johnson’s recent articles in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate about the reactions of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64’s and Maine Township High School District 207’s superintendents to their schools’ performance on the first round of the Partnership for Assessment of Reading for College and Careers (“PARCC”) testing.

You can find them at: “District 64 school chief says PARCC results a ‘snapshot in time’ “ (Dec. 15, 2015) and “District 207 superintendent: Test results create ‘false narrative’ of student performance” (Dec. 14, 2015).

D-64 superintendent Laurie Heinz attempts to defend what sounds like her district’s unimpressive performance with the following italicized quotes from the first article:

“From a formatting perspective, [the PARCC test] went well. We had no technical issues.”

In other words, D-64 didn’t screw up the administration of the test. Huzzah!

“I have not looked at how our results are compared to other schools.”

The very first thing Ms. Heinz should be doing is comparing D-64’s results to other districts – because whatever D-64 schools add to our property values is relative to how they match up with other demographically-comparable districts. Perhaps Heinz might be more motivated to prioritize that kind of comparative analysis if our School Board told her that the continuation of her employment and $250,000+ salary depends upon how D-64 rates against other comparable districts? Oh, wait…never mind: that feckless Board would never impose a performance standard on her after.

“My letter to parents explained the belief we have that this [PARCC test] is a snapshot in time….”

EVERY test – including a math final, the SAT, the ACT, etc. – is “a snapshot in time.” So her point is?

“We surpassed the state of Illinois average in both language arts and math.”

Seriously? As best as we can tell, D-64 is in the top 10-15% in per-pupil expenditures among ALL Illinois elementary school districts, yet Heinz is bragging about merely “surpassing the state of Illinois average.” Seriously?

“We had over 50 percent of our students within those two [“thorough understanding” and “exceeds”] levels in reading and…math.”

Merely “over 50 percent”?  See previous comment, but add one more “seriously?”

Interestingly enough, D-207 superintendent Ken Wallace echoed some of Heinz’s themes – which causes us to wonder if they were generic sound-bites and “talking points” from some special PARCC public relations template ginned up by the propaganda department of the Illinois Association of School Administrators that self-congratulatory fluff-and-stroke/networking organization for superintendents and

But Wallace takes it up a notch by ripping on the tests themselves and with statements like:

“Right now, the results [of the PARCC test] are next to meaningless to us” because he doesn’t think “they truly and accurately reflect the success of [D-207] students.”

Not surprisingly Wallace, like Heinz, avoids matching up D-207’s PARCC results with those of other demographically-comparable districts. Why make such comparisons when you can blow smoke up your own kilt and befuddle the taxpayers by insisting that D-207 is doing great – just ask ‘em!

“Any one test is not going to be a better predictor of student success in college than achievement across a rigorous set of courses.”

That very well may be true. But tell that to the admissions department of your kid’s dream college when he/she pulls a 1500 on the SAT, or a 17 on the ACT.  Or see how many advanced placement credits can be earned  with “1”s on those AP exams.

And when asked what plans D-207 has for next year’s testing, Wallace sounded totally dismissive of the test and/or of what level of achievement is expected:

“We will meet the minimum guidelines, testing in algebra and language arts.”

Yes, by all means let’s be satisfied with “the minimum” because that’s been working so well for the District over the last decade as its ranking has steadily declined even as its cost per pupil to our taxpayers has steadily increased.

Once again, we see that both of our school districts keep whistling past the graveyards of standardized test-based achievement and of comparing that achievement to other demographically-similar districts with which Park Ridge competes for new residents.

And while it seeems almost unfathomable that a school board could be any less demanding of student achievement and of teacher/administrator accountability than the D-64 Board, the D-207 Board may have met and exceeded that level of irresponsibility and general cluelessness.  At the very least they are 1 and 1A.

Which brings to mind, again, Mark Twain’s famous quote:

“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.”

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The pop quiz today has only one question: Name the two units of local government that, in the past two months, have rewarded their No. 1 bureaucrat for what appears to be average performance, at best?

If you answered “Park Ridge-Niles School Dist. 64 and Maine Twp. High School Dist. 207,” you’re a winner – even if, as a taxpayer, you might actually be more of a loser.

As we wrote about in several posts culminating in those of 07.01.15 and 07.06.15, the D-64 Board fell all over itself in unanimously voting to give rookie CEO/superintendent Laurie Heinz a one-year extension to her original three-year contract. That ensured that Heinz will be able to draw an additional $250,000+ from D-64 taxpayers despite not one shred of documentary evidence (or, at least, none that the D-64 Board chose to share with the taxpayers) of any significant improvement in D-64’s chronically lackluster student performance, as measured by objective statewide testing rather than D-64’s self-congratulatory navel gazing.

Three of the seven Board members (Mark Eggemann, Dathan Paterno and Tom Sotos) voted against giving Heinz an actual “raise” that we understand (because, of course, the details were not published) is worth between $10,000 and $20,000 – although, frankly, we don’t see the sense of giving away a $250,000+ contract extension but then denying a $10-20,000 raise.

Kind of like former Park Ridge alderman Don Bach’s (3rd) telling Bill Napleton back in January 2008 that the latter’s disrespect for Park Ridge ensured that Bach would never buy another $40,000 Cadillac from him – before voting to give Napleton up to $2.4 million of public dollars in environmental clean-up funding and sales-tax sharing revenues.

Not to be outdone by D-64’s drunken sailors, on July 16 the D-207 Board approved a one-year extension to the contract of superintendent Ken Wallace. This extension could push his pay up to $280,000 or more by the 2019-20 school year, once the built-in annual increases and available merit bonuses are included. And that also doesn’t count the additional thousands of dollars the District will pay to cover Wallace’s required pension contributions.

Besides paying premium prices for stagnant (or worse) performance, however, the other thing both school boards have in common is how they hid all the important discussions about Heinz’s and Wallace’s contract extensions and raises from the taxpayers through the BFF of every shameless and gutless politician: the closed session.

Frankly, there is no more effective and disrespectful way for our elected officials to trample transparency and accountability than by hiding in closed session – especially if all members of the governing body are co-conspirators who will make sure that, like Vegas, whatever happens in closed session stays in closed session. Although the Illinois Open Meetings Act does not require that closed session matters remain secret, not even one school board member has in the past two decades has displayed the integrity to publicly disclose closed-session proceedings the way then-ald. Dave Schmidt did by blowing the whistle on some kinky Council real estate maneuvering over the 720 Garden property back in 2008.

We’re still optimistic that D-64 newbie Eggemann, and maybe even newbie Sotos, might have their own “720 Garden Moment” over at D-64, hopefully sooner rather than later.

But we have no such hope for the Star Chamber that is the D-207 Board, where president Margaret McGrath leads a chorus of rubber-stampers – Sean Sullivan, Carla Owen, Paula Bessler, Mary Childers, Jin Lee and Teri Collins – in what has long been a pattern and practice of anti-transparency and un-accountability.

If you have any doubt about that, Exhibit A is the fact that while the City Council, the Park Board and the D-64 Board all post their meeting packets on-line prior to their meetings, the D-207 Board doesn’t.  Heck, the D-207 Board lacks the basic honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability to post its meeting packets on the District’s website even AFTER the meetings.

Instead, all D-207 provides its taxpayers is an agenda like the one for the 06.09.15 Board meeting, which advised that there would be a “CLOSED SESSSION” involving the “Appointment, Employment, Compensation, Performance Discipline or Dismissal of Employees.”

Such a vague explanation is a pretty effective way of discouraging taxpayers from showing up and asking any tough questions.

If you watch the very end of Part I of the meeting video, you’ll see and hear the Board adjourn to closed session one hour into the meeting, or about 8:30 p.m.; and if you watch the beginning of Part II of the meeting video, you’ll see and hear the Board return from the closed session about an hour later.

What went on during that “secret” hour is anybody’s guess. But one can safely assume it had something to do with the events beginning at the 3:57 mark of Part 2, when Sullivan moves to give Wallace $51,000 of additional merit compensation for meeting both his “target goals” (whatever they are/were) and his “stretch target goals (whatever they are/were). And at the 5:03 mark, McGrath reads a statement in which she declares that Wallace had met all his performance goals, and does so with an almost-regal self-assurance that suggests it is “beyond contestation”:

We would not have been surprised to hear her tell any doubters to “go put that in your pipe and smoke it.” But as the room full of empty chairs confirms, there were no doubters – pipe-smokers or non – to be found at that point in the proceedings.

Watching that video and contemplating those proceedings gave us a major case of déjà vu, as it called to mind our 10.22.13 post in which we remarked how the D-207 Board was giving Wallace a 5-year contract extension for…er…um…we aren’t quite sure what – even as Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville was getting only a 3-year extension after winning his second Stanley Cup.

Silly us, comparing the leadership of an unaccountable, un-competitive bureaucracy to the leadership of a what-have-you-done-lately, highly-competitive business enterprise where objectively measurable results actually matter; and compensation is merit-based.

That dichotomy at least partially explains why D-64 and D-207 taxes keep going up while the ranking of D-207’s “flagship” school, Maine South, has slid solidly into the 20s from a decade ago when it was in, or close to, Illinois’ Top 10 – and D-64 school rankings rarely even crack the Top 50.

That makes us wonder how any sane D-207 Board member can justify these regular contract extensions and raises for Wallace.

And it makes us wonder even more about the sanity of those D-64 Board members who are paying Heinz almost as much as Wallace is getting, even though she’s managing less than 4,400 students compared to Wallace’s 6,400; and she oversees a budget of less than $80 million while Wallace manages a $160 million budget.

Meanwhile, you Park Ridge taxpayers with no kids in either district but whose home is one of, if not the, largest asset you own can wonder about just how much longer that “Park Ridge has GREAT schools” sales pitch can lure in new residents (and what kind of new residents they might be) when, year after year, the various school rankings show our schools firmly behind those in Glenview, Northbrook, Evanston, Arlington Hts., Buffalo Grove, Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Mt. Prospect, Deerfield, Highland Park, Lincolnshire.

How soon will it become commonplace for current residents – like the mother commenting on John Bennett’s August 2 post on the Park Ridge Citizens Online FB page – to shamelessly proclaim how they will be packing up and moving out of Park Ridge just as soon as their kids suck the last ounce of “free”/subsidized education out of their fellow Park Ridge taxpayers:

“We still pay the highest fees than almost every other higher class suburbs around. And still never got a clear answer on where the money goes. Everything they supposedly told us are things the PTO supposedly pays for. And the PTO gets alot of money through those directories, every hot lunch and slice of pizza they make money off of. But at least they stopped charging for Lunch supervision! Its total BS! I cannot wait until my youngest finishes Maine South, we are outta here.”

For those of you at all uncertain about our definition of the term “freeloader,” you’ve just read the embodiment of it.

That’s the kind of attitude that, if it proliferates, will create a downward spiral for this community – aided and abetted by feckless, fiscally-irresponsible elected officials whose idea of “transparency” is conspiring in secret with the bureaucrats they’re already overpaying with OPM.

Ours.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Last year the City of Park Ridge suffered a bit of a national black-eye when a video of a middle-aged Park Ridge man being beaten by a few young thugs in the midst of a gathering of local (?) youths at Hinkley Park went viral.

News outlets around the county got to watch and listen to our callow youth triumphantly chant “U-S-A!” as the father, searching for his son in the crowd after Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) had closed down for the night, was verbally abused and physically tuned up.

As we wrote about in our 07.25.14 and 07.31.14 posts, our local police did a pretty horsebleep job of dealing with that Lord Of The Flies scenario and its group psychosis, despite being called out on two separate occasions within a couple/three hours of the incident. And that policing charade was followed by what could best be described as pathetic hand-wringing and buck-passing that we wrote about in our 08.12.14 post.

Almost a year later, the criminal charges against the four local darlings who assaulted and/or battered the dad are still wending their way through the Cook County justice system, with two of the “young men” scheduled to appear in court on May 26.

But as Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel once was famously quoted: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

So this year the Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation (“MCYAF”) – in conjunction with the TOPR promoters, the Park Ridge Park District, the Police Departments, Maine South High School and Lincoln Middle School – is organizing even more events to…wait for it…“draw a bigger crowd” of youths to the Park Ridge Library lawn and the TOPR/Uptown area, according to a May 12, 2015 article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Group planning new activities aimed at teens during Taste of Park Ridge”)

That’s right, campers: The same Police Department and Park District that, together, couldn’t handle the reported 40+, 75+ and then 100+ youths who ended up at Hinkley Park, including the contingent of about 50 who migrated there from the Library lawn after TOPR closed for the evening at 10:00 p.m. last July 12, are part of an effort to encourage an even “bigger crowd” of youths to show up for activities at and around the TOPR this year.  But only until TOPR closes at 10:00 p.m.

Brilliant!

And the outgoing Park District president Mel Thillens, who also wears the TOPR chairman’s chapeau, is looking to get the Park District to have an “open swim” at Hinkley, just in case there are some aquatic-oriented youths whom might otherwise not be drawn to the area and miss out on the mob action…er, we mean fun.

To quote MCYAF’s (and newly-elected Maine Twp. H.S. Dist. 207 Board member) Teri Collins: “We think part of the problem is that kids don’t have things to do that are age appropriate.”

Sure they do, Teri: What’s more “age appropriate” for teenage kids than hanging out with friends, preferably somewhere their parents and other responsible adults can’t keep an eye on them?

And occasionally beating the tar out of some parent who foolishly invades their turf after TOPR closes at 10:00 p.m., two full hours before the City’s curfew goes into effect?

Given last year’s apres-TOPR fiasco, however, this year the Police Department is promising to deploy more troops to Hinkley. And maybe, unlike last year, the gendarmerie that shows up might actually stick around for awhile instead of stopping by, smiling, and leaving the growing crowd to its own devices despite two separate telephone complaints about repeated incidents of fireworks discharge, vandalism and aggravated mopery with intent to gawk.

Doing things to bring even more teenagers into Uptown on the Friday and Saturday evenings of TOPR makes us wonder what exactly are these folks thinking – besides the obvious special-interest benefits of more traffic and revenue for TOPR, and a higher public profile (and more donations?) for MCYAF.

It also makes us ask: Hey, Mel and Teri…are TOPR and MCYAF going to be footing the extra cop costs, or will the taxpayers get stuck with those while your organizations just reap the benefits?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Since 2009 the City of Park Ridge has had the most transparent operations of any local governmental unit, by far. That’s because the late Mayor Dave Schmidt fought tooth and nail to make it so. And because the voters wisely elected a majority of aldermen who joined Mayor Dave in that fight.

One of the fruits of that transparency was on display – naturally, given that “on display” is what transparency’s all about – at the City Council COW (Committee Of the Whole) meeting last Monday (April 27) night when the Council conducted its open-session review of City Manager Shawn Hamilton.

Hamilton is the top City employee and its highest paid one. He’s also, as we understand it, the only City employee whom the Council is legally empowered to directly hire, fire, review and compensate.  And as it has done for the past few years, the Council once again conducted his review in open session, with the press present and the videocamera running.

That’s the way government should work: out in the open, in the bright light of day.

According to the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story about the process (“City manager receives ‘below average’ performance review,” 04.29.15), Hamilton received less than a ringing endorsement of his past year’s performance.  In the pre-Schmidt, pre-transparency years, there would have been no such H-A story because the process would have been hidden from view in closed session, leaving the taxpayers scratching their heads and wondering why the then-city managers were getting their regular raises and benefit increases.

Not only does the transparency of the City’s process give the ordinary taxpayer an up-close-and-personal appreciation for how their top employee performed over the past year, but it also gives them some insight into how their aldermen came up with Hamilton’s rating – because the aldermen’s actual rating sheets were part of the meeting materials posted on the City’s website.  That way, taxpayers can see for themselves what factors went into that rating.

Unfortunately, at its March 5 meeting the Park Ridge Park District Board took a big step backward from last year’s more transparent process for evaluating the District’s top employee, Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle.  Instead of an open-session discussion like last year, the Park Board waited until the end of its lengthy meeting before running into closed session for its 40-minute evaluation of Mountcastle.  The result: another 4% salary boost (from $149,000 to $155,000) after a 4% bump last year and a 7% bump in 2013.

Not surprisingly, the individual Park Board members’ reviews of Mountcastle were not posted on the District’s website, nor does it sound like any Board members except president Mel Thillens actually saw all the written reviews prior to the Board adjourning, lemming-like, into the closed session.

Call it a cowardly retreat from the promise of last year’s more-open process.

That probably shouldn’t have come as a total surprise, however, given that Board president Thillens and several other Board members have consistently displayed no natural instinct for transparency and accountability – other than when they are on the campaign trail, or when they believe they have no other alternative.

But when it comes to treating the taxpayers like mushrooms, nobody does it any better/worse than both of our local school boards. When they review their respective superintendents – Park Ridge-Niles School District 64’s $240,000+ Laurie Heinz, and Maine Twp. H.S. District 207’s $250,000+ Ken Wallace – those boards are so secretive that Edward Snowden would be challenged to sneak a peek.

We’ve heard all the secrecy arguments, most of which are some variation on the “closed sessions let elected officials speak candidly” theme.

Elected officials who need the secrecy of a closed session to speak candidly about the performance of their government unit’s top executive have no business holding public office.

Too bad so many of them still do.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Early voting for our April 7 local election started last Monday (March 23) and continues through this Saturday, April 4. Although we always encourage voter turnout, we oppose early voting for a number of reasons, several of which we noted in our post of October 20, 2014.

Irrespective of when voters vote, however, make no mistake about it: voting matters.

As we’ve seen over the past decade, electing pleasant but inept go-along-to-get along folks to our school boards can bring our community years of overpriced-but-underperforming educational services that not only do a disservice to the children of our community but also rob our taxpayers of money that could and should be better spent.  The higher our property taxes increase and the lower our school rankings fall, the more likely it is that comparative home shoppers will look more favorably on places like Glenview and Northbrook.

Being eternal optimists, however, we always hope for elections that present the voters with meaningful choices. Occasionally the choice is between a good candidate and a better one, but all too often it seems like the choice ends up between a mediocre candidate and a bad one; or between a bad and a worse one.

And sometimes, especially where incumbents are involved, their record of poor performance dictates a “throw the bums out” vote, almost irrespective of who their opponents might be.

Which explains today’s “endorsement” for throwing out the incumbents at Maine Twp. School District 207 who are running as a ticket/slate: Sean O’Brien Sullivan, seeking his third four-year term; Paula Meyer Besler, who was appointed to the board last April and is seeking a full four-year term; and Pablo Morales, who was appointed to the board last August and also is seeking a full four-year term.

Admittedly, Besler and Morales are incumbents lite, their appointments appearing to have been engineered and effected in closed session meetings to avoid the scrutiny of the media and the taxpayers who provide the overwhelming majority of D-207’s approximately $150 million annual budget.  We wrote about that perverted process in our August 29, 2014 post. Such a lack of transparency raises all sorts of questions about the honesty and integrity of both that board and its process for appointing replacement board members.

But the key reason why we encourage the voters to show these incumbents the door is because they clearly don’t “get” what it means to hold the public trust for that many students and that much taxpayer money – or to “get” what the students and the taxpayers deserve for their $150 million a year.

Back in our October 30, 2009 post. we reported that D-207’s flagship school, Maine South, ranked 12th on the Chicago Tribune’s “Top 50” high schools list (based purely on test scores), while the Chicago Sun-Times ranked it 13th on its “Top 100” list (based on test scores and other factors). Just three years later, however, Maine South had slid to 24th place according to the 2012 Chicago Sun-Times analysis, and 29th-place in U.S. News & World’s 2012 rankings of Illinois public high schools.  Worse yet, neither Maine East or Maine West was within a $50 cab ride of Maine South in any of these rankings.

But you wouldn’t guess that from hearing Sullivan, Besler or Morales talk about D-207.

According to a Daily Herald article dated February 19, 2015, Sullivan claims that D-207 “is doing an excellent job” – so excellent, in fact, that he “would make no ‘changes’ at this time.” Running mate Besler claims to be “extremely satisfied” with how D-207 is preparing its students for college and/or the start of their careers, and she too does not “believe any changes are needed at this time.” Only Morales gives a less-than-stellar endorsement of D-207’s educational achievement, saying that it merely does “a good job preparing students for the next phase of their lives.”

What’s that old line about denial being not just a river in Egypt?

If you need any other reasons to just say “no” to Sullivan, Besler and Morales, try Sullivan’s 2011 endorsement by the Maine Teachers Association, D-207’s teachers union – a dubious achievement he is likely to repeat again this year, either expressly or tacitly. Or check out Besler’s website, where the “Issues” tab gets you what appear to be a bunch of canned platitudes from D-207 rather than Besler’s views…assuming she has any beyond the District’s own pablum.

As for Morales, his response to a Daily Herald question about his views of teacher contracts – without acknowledging that D-207 teachers and administrators are among the highest paid in the state – speaks volumes: “Therefore, one of my core beliefs is that teachers should work in an environment where they feel respected, valued, have the tools to do their job well and are fairly compensated.”

For those not conversant in politician speak, that translates to: “Whatever the teachers want.”

When it comes to demanding a full dollar’s worth of educational value from every taxpayer dollar expended, these three incumbents have demonstrated little more than the ability to rearrange deck chairs and play “Nearer My God To Thee” on the kazoo.  Re-electing them would effectively condemn D-207 to the continued decline of its academic standing – which these incumbents and their four fellow board co-conspirators would likely address with even more spending, even higher taxes, and even less accountability.

Unfortuntately, while we would love to provide glowing endorsements for each of the three challengers to these incumbents – Theresa Collins, Jill Dolan and Chimanlal Patel – we cannot.  They are just alternatives.

In that same February 19 Daily Herald article, Collins says that “[w]e should be able to increase our rankings…on an overall basis” without suggesting even one way of doing so. Dolan professes to be “proud that our District offers many programs academically and in the arts.” And Patel, while claiming he believes “in constant improvement,” seems fixated on “special needs…cultural integration and language education” without any recognition of the related costs.

Nevertheless, the three incumbents have already shown themselves to be hell-bent on continuing to drive the D-207 train the wrong way down the track, with no intention of letting up on the throttle.  So all we can do is urge voters to switch engineers ASAP and hope for something better.

Because “better” won’t be coming from these incumbents.

To read or post comments, click on title.

For those of you who actually give a rat’s derriere about who runs our local governmental bodies for the next four years – and how they do it – tonight is what passes for the unofficial kick-off of the 2015 election season in these parts.

It’s the Republican Women of Park Ridge’s 2015 Candidate Forum, and it will be held at the South Park Field House, Talcott at Cumberland, beginning at 7:00 p.m.

It is expected to feature appearances by Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Beyonce, Sam Smith…wait a minute, no…that’s the list of the performers from the recent Grammy Awards broadcast. Sorry.

Instead, you’ll get to see and hear the candidates for:

• Park Ridge alderman in Wards 1, 3, 5 and 7, of which only Wards 1 and 3 have contested races (Andrea Cline v. John Moran, and Rick Van Roeyen v. Bob Wilkening);
• Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board, where four candidates are running for three 4-year terms (Tony Borrelli v. Greg Bublitz v. Mark Eggemann v. Tom Sotos), and one candidate, Bob Johnson, is running unopposed for a 2-year term;
• Maine Twp. High School District 207 Board, with six candidates running for three 4-year terms (Paula Besler v. Theresa Collins v. Jill Dolan v. Chimanial Patel v. Pablo Morales v. Sean Sullivan);
• the Park Ridge Park District Board, for which there are four candidates running for three 4-year terms (Cynthia Grau v. Jim O’Brien v. Mary Wynn Ryan v. Mel Thillens); and
• the Oakton Community College Board, where five candidates are running for two 6-year terms (Thresa Bashiri-Remetio v. Christopher Evdoxiadis v. Constantine Ress v. Benjamin Salzberg v. William Stafford).

Although we don’t particularly care for the “forum” format in which each candidate speaks for around four minutes and fields no questions from his/her opponents or the audience, we understand the difficulties of implementing a “debate” format with so many candidates. Nevertheless, this event is worthy of your attention because it will be the first – and perhaps only – time where voters can expect to see and hear all the candidates for these offices in one place.

And that’s important.

While the now-ubiquitous websites and flyers can give you a lot of useful information about the candidates, seeing and hearing them in person is one of the best ways – if not the best way – to judge their sincerity, genuineness and credibility. That’s why the truth-seeking function of our judicial system is based on a judge and jury getting the opportunity to take the measure of witnesses in person.

And with our state and its subsidiary local governmental units in such cumulatively dire economic straits, electing the most qualified, sincere, genuine and credible candidates means more today than ever before.  So it’s pretty darned sad that we have two uncontested aldermanic races, and effectively only one contested race for the D-64 Board and the Park Board.  And then folks wonder why Illinois is in the mess it is!

The most important races are for the boards of the two school districts, which consume almost 70% of our property taxes.

Over the past several years their rankings vis-à-vis the public schools of other comparably-affluent communities (and of the Chicago magnet schools) have dropped considerably from the days when Maine South was a fixture among the Top Five public high schools in Illinois – and similar regard was given D-64 schools as being the principal feeder system for Maine South.

Meanwhile, both districts’ teachers and administrators appear to be among the highest paid, thanks to elected school board members who don’t seem to understand that they are supposed to be representing the taxpayers’ interests every bit as much as the students’ interests. Or the concept of paying for performance. Or of not being sock puppets for the teachers’ unions. Or of doing things of consequence out in the open instead of hiding in closed sessions, as we wrote about in our 08.29.14 post.

The D-64 Board members elected in April also will be charged with negotiating the next D-64 teachers contract in 2016. That may be the single biggest responsibility they will have during their four years in office.

The good news is that neither of the perpetrators of the last negotiated-in-secret sweetheart teachers contract – current Board member John Heyde and former board member Pat Fioretto – will be part of that process. The bad news is that Heyde’s “Mini Me,” Scott Zimmerman, will be the most senior Board member and likely to lead the negotiating team; and the rest of the current Board have shown themselves to be more sock puppet than steel-spined when it comes to fiscal matters.

The candidates in the two contested races for the City Council, on the other hand, seem to be focused on the issue of flooding. The decisive question there may end up being who is less of a one-trick pony and more of a big-picture visionary.

And we wonder whether the Park Board incumbents will even attempt to alibi/justify/spin the quality of their stewardship under which the District has taken on around $19 million of new long-term debt, $7 million of which (for the Centennial water park) never even went to referendum, and the remainder of which – for the new Prospect Park – went to referendum only because the $7 million water park debt used up most of the District’s limited non-referendum borrowing power.

So bundle up and come on out to the South Park Field House tonight to see and hear the candidates who want your vote, and control over your tax dollars, for the next several years.  Give yourself the best possible chance to make the best possible decision on election day.

Or you can always take the easy way out and move to Chicago – where “participatory government” means selling your soul, and your finances, to Mayor Tiny Dancer.

To read or post comments, click on title.

In our 07.07.14 post we criticized the completely gratuitous secrecy with which the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 School Board shrouded its deliberations that resulted in the appointment of Robert Johnson to fill the chair Terry Cameron gave up when he moved out of state.

To be clear, our criticism was directed solely at the Board and its unacceptable process, not at Johnson.

At that time we called D-64 “the closest thing to a secret society among any of our four local governmental bodies.” We discredited D-64 propaganda minister Bernadette Tramm for clamping a lid down on the identities of the 12 applicants for the vacancy, and even keeping the names of the 8 finalists secret until six hours before the “public hearing” at which those finalists were to be interviewed by the Board – which she did with either the express direction or tacit approval of the D-64 Board.

Not surprisingly, Tramm provided no biographical information about those 8 finalists.  Worse yet, the D-64 Board apparently didn’t care whether any members of the public showed up to bear witness to those interviews, much less contribute meaningful information or ask questions that might aid in the vetting process.

But this week we learned that Ms. Tramm’s secrecy has been eclipsed by her counterpart at Maine Twp. School Dist. 207, David Beery, who ratcheted up Tramm-style concealment by hiding the identities of the reported 7 applicants for the seat of departing School Board member Eric Leys, who also is moving out of state, until AFTER the Board made its decision.

Hmmm…is local school board members moving out of state a trend we should start tracking?

Beery and the D-207 Board, doing its best Star Chamber impersonation, kept the names of those 7 applicants completely under wraps through the special meeting held last Sunday (August 24) at 2:15 p.m. (gee, was the 2:15 a.m. slot already filled?) that, according to the meeting agenda, featured a closed-session during which that Board deliberated the appointment which culminated in the announcement of Park Ridge resident Pablo Morales to fill Leys’ seat.  And even now that the announcement has been made, the identities of the 6 other applicants still appears to be a closely-guarded secret.

Unlike D-64, even the D-207 Board’s applicant interviews must have been conducted in closed session – based on that August 27 agenda and a Chicago Tribune article (“District 207 seeks to fill board vacancy,” 08.07.14) in which Beery was quoted as being “almost certain” that both the interviews and Board deliberations would be conducted in closed session. So, even more than with D-64, the D-207 taxpayers were deprived of any meaningful ability to judge the qualifications of the applicants for themselves, and to contribute to the selection process of either Mr. Morales or his anonymous competition for that vacancy.

For a School Board fixated on minimizing scrutiny and avoiding accountability for such dubious “achievements” as the continuing decline in the academic rankings of D-207 and Maine South, sharing the identities (and, heaven forbid, the applications and resumes) of applicants for such an important position in advance of the selection just wouldn’t be prudent.  Consequently, unless a D-207 version of Edward Snowden leaks that information, D-207 taxpayers will have to blindly accept the glowing assurances of Board president Margaret McGrath (in the announcement of Morales’ appointment) that D-207 “had seven outstanding candidates from which to choose”; and that Morales was the best of the bunch.

Just like D-207 taxpayers had to blindly accept McGrath’s glowing assurances that D-207 “had nine outstanding candidates from which to choose” the replacement for a departing Donna Pellar (who only moved outside the district) in announcing the appointment of Paula Besler after a similarly stealthy selection process that culminated in another Sunday afternoon closed-session interview process and deliberation last April – according to the agenda for that meeting.

Whether Morales and Besler truly were the best choices among the applicants is a question that likely will never be answered because, now that both of those kangaroo courts have rendered their verdicts, even a FOIA request for those names-that-must-not-be-spoken and their applications/resumes doesn’t appear to be worth the effort.

But we believe it’s worth mentioning that Morales currently has two sons attending Maine South. And Besler has two children at Maine South, with another one likely to go there upon graduation from D-64. If that causes D-207 taxpayers to wonder just how aggressive Morales and Besler might be in holding Maine South teachers and administrators accountable for their performance, or in overseeing negotiations of the next teachers’ contract, or in considering raises and benefits for administrators, it should.

Over the years we have repeatedly heard parents of Maine South and D-64 students express anxiety aplenty about whether and how to voice complaints about curriculum, books, materials and personnel for fear of retaliation or other repercussions against their school children. And we’ve heard anecdotes about such retaliation and repercussions actually occurring.

Whether those anecdotes are legit or pure hooey is effectively meaningless, however, because the prospective chilling effect on parents appears to be real.

Accordingly, filling the School Boards of both D-207 and D-64 with arguably “vulnerable” members whose duty to look out for the taxpayers’ interests might very well be compromised (if not outright conflicted) by their desire to look out for the interests of their own children, creates a risk – and maybe even a likelihood – that such vulnerable Board members will just be more bobble-head rubber stampers for whatever the teachers and administrators want.  It also raises a legitimate question of whether these opaque selection processes are being orchestrated by D-207’s and D-64’s Board presidents, each of whom have children in schools within their respective bailiwicks.

Meanwhile, these Star Chamber selection processes are big-time whacks on the derrieres of the taxpayers by their elected and appointed officials whose governmental bodies consume, collectively, over TWO-THIRDS of our property taxes.

Thank you, Boards…may we have another?

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We’ve never been fans of COLAs: Cost Of Living Allowances, otherwise known as non-merit based pay raises tied to the cost of living.

The reason is simple.

The cost of living (usually measured by the Consumer Price Index, or “CPI”) has nothing whatsoever to do with legitimately increasing an employee’s compensation.  That’s normally the purpose of increased productivity, profitability and/or performance, either individually or as part of an organization’s success.

A COLA, on the other hand, is basically an insurance policy that guarantees the COLA-ed employee’s buying power from erosion by inflation. As the cost of living goes up, so does the employee’s pay to protect his/her ability to buy the same amount of stuff he/she could buy before.

Consider it a kind of financial bubble-wrap designed to further protect those COLA-ed employees from yet another of life’s common risks the rest of us have to endure.

Not surprisingly, such a disconnect of compensation from productivity tends to occur almost exclusively in the fantasy-land that is public-sector employment. And, not surprisingly, one of its strongest bastions is public education, where accountability basically doesn’t exist.

Which brings us to last week’s report in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate of a new Maine Twp. High School District 207 teachers union contract (“New teachers’ contract approved for Maine Township High Schools,” May 8).

In typical school board fashion – both D-207 and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 are guilty – this latest contract appears to have been negotiated behind closed doors with no information about its terms being released until after it became the proverbial “done deal,” ratified by the teachers union and approved by the D-207 Board on May 5.  Only then did the press releases get cranked out about “win-win” and all the other standard I’m-okay-you’re-okay palaver we’ve come to expect whenever the teachers unions and the bobble-headed school board members combine to fleece the taxpayers.

Listen to union president Mike Poehler:

“The agreement helps stabilize a financial base that ensures a rich curricular environment with diverse elective and core class offerings as well as extra curricular activities for the students of Maine Township High Schools well into the future.”

George Orwell’s “Big Brother” would have been okay with that, especially the part about the “rich curricular environment” – even as the District’s objectively measurable performance and rankings continue their decline while teacher and administrator pay continues to increase, as we noted in our post: “Are Our Schools Threatening Park Ridge Property Values?” (11.04.13)..

Now listen to School Board president Margaret McGrath:

“The settlement is fair to all parties, fiscally conservative for our taxpayers, and it provides long-term cost savings to the District.”

How exactly does it do that?

We can’t say for sure because we couldn’t find the actual contract anywhere on the D-207 website despite looking for it for the better part of 10 minutes – which, as we all know, is virtually an eternity on the Internet, and the hallmark of website-unfriendliness.  As we recall, however, D-64 didn’t post its current contract until a couple of months after it was approved by that Board, so D-207 can keep this new contract under wraps for a while yet without under-performing D-64.

The new contract reportedly is a five-year deal, the first year of which carries a flat 2% increase. After that the raises become tied to the CPI, although the H-A article doesn’t explain whether it will be a straight application of the CPI or a “CPI-plus” arrangement – kind of like commercial loans that have LIBOR-based interest rates with a basis point kicker; e.g., “LIBOR plus 300 basis points.”

But according to a Daily Herald article from 05.06.14, the CPI-based plan would produce increases from 1% to 3%, although that article doesn’t explain how that calculation will be done.

The Daily Herald article also reports that, under the new contract, a beginner D-207 teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no teaching experience will make $55,681, while a teacher with 30 years of experience and a master’s degree would be paid $132,635.  And let’s remember that’s for 8-9 months of actual work, so those salaries annualize to at least $74,241 and $176,847, respectively.

Compare that to the Park Ridge median household income of around $85,000 and you start to see what happened to the “middle class,” at least in Park Ridge: it became “upper class,” at the taxpayers’ expense.

Some brief additional research, however, has turned up at least one 40 year old “staff supervisor” with only 16 years of experience (all in D-207) making $139,000; drivers ed. teachers making between $121,000 and $149,000; librarians taking down between $100,000 and $130,000; and staff social workers and psychologists making between $116,000 and 165,000.  Not surprisingly, you can’t find any of THAT information on the D-207 website, either.

Ms. McGrath calls the new contract “fiscally conservative for our taxpayers.” In the words of the fictional Col. Sherman Potter on t.v.’s iconic “M*A*S*H*”: “Horse hockey!”

How many of you taxpayers are getting a 2% raise this year and a guaranteed four more years of CPI-based raises – without having to do one extra lick of work or otherwise improve your productivity? And that CPI-based increase is in addition to the traditional “step” increases teachers get simply for putting another year into the system.  Not surprisingly, nobody at D-207 is talking about what that adds up to annually.

But that’s still not all.

According to an article in the Park Ridge Journal (“New Dist. 207 Teacher Contract; $1,250 Merit Pay for ‘Excellent’ Instructors,” 05.08.14), teachers who earn an “excellent” rating in their annual review can pick up a $1,250 bonus.

We’re all for merit pay…just not on top of COLAs and step-increases.

And let’s not forget those outstanding Illinois constitutionally-guaranteed defined-benefit pensions that enable retired teachers and administrators to earn almost as much in retirement as they did for working – and which private sector workers would need 401(k)s in the $3-4 million range in order to match.

Given this largesse, we’d hate to see what Ms. McGrath and her fellow Board members who unanimously approved this contract – Sean Sullivan, Eric Leys, Mary Childers, Carla Owen, Jin Lee and Paula Besler – would consider “fiscally irresponsible.”

But we’d bet it involves even more bubble-wrap.

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We’re already several days into 2014 and nothing all that significant has happened in local government.

Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is purely in the eye of the beholder, as we saw from several comments to our January 1 post which ripped Mayor Schmidt and the City Council for not moving fast enough to turn Park Ridge into a retail mecca, replace its antiquated sewer system, completely solve the flooding problem, and find Waldo, generally without raising taxes.  All those failings notwithstanding, however, let’s look ahead at some of the things that arguably are teed up for 2014 and consider whether they should remain that way, or whether they should be teed down.

Let’s start with EMB signs.  Frankly, we don’t care whether they’re legalized or not.  But we think the “distracted driver” argument raised by some opponents of EMBs is bogus.  Any driver who hasn’t already bounced off the median on 294 while passing that Barnum & Bailey community commonly known as Rosemont likely is immune to the more modest distractions that might be presented if The Sandlot gets an EMB and advertises “buy-one-beef-get-one-free,” or Joseph A. Banks rocks its own EMB with a “We’ll PAY YOU to buy our clothes!” invitation.

A tougher task is predicting the effect on the City’s sales tax revenues – direct and indirect – from Whole Foods and the new Mariano’s.  Will the new stores cannibalize Jewel and Trader Joe’s?  Or will they draw in enough customers from outside Park Ridge to simply grow the total retail grocery pie?  Whatever the outcome, that’s the competition that “capitalism” is supposed to provide.  And, best of all, this City Council hasn’t given subsidies to any of them.

In a sick and twisted way, we can’t wait to see the results of the community health survey created and administered under the auspices of Lutheran General Hospital.  Judging by the few results that have leaked out – and by how long LGH is delaying the release of the results, a reliable signal that a seamless propaganda message is still being woven – we expect “results” that will be used to argue (or should we say “Advocate”) for the creation of a City mental health department.  Or, at the very least, a push for City-funding for mental health care provided by LGH personnel.

Over at School District 64, the most important task will be choosing the new superintendent from two announced finalists – Laurie Heinz from Skokie Dist. 68 and Robert Machak from Evergreen Park Dist. 124 – which is scheduled to occur within the next couple of weeks.  Machak will be at Emerson Middle School to meet with the public tomorrow, Jan. 9, from 10:30 to 11:00 a.m.; and at Lincoln Middle School from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m.  Heinz will do the same drill at the same places and times on Friday, Jan. 10.  Don’t blink, or you might miss them.

While this process is somewhat more transparent than was the selection of current supt. Phil Bender four years ago, it remains far less than what taxpayers deserve – especially considering that, according to Board President Anthony Borrelli (as reported in a Jan. 6 Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story), the D-64 Board will have its “serious heart-to-heart [interview] with these candidates and find out what makes them tick, so to speak” in a closed session, hidden from public view.

C’mon, Tony, that’s a fake punt right out of former pres. John Heyde’s playbook!  Sad to say, but when it comes to transparency, this looks like one step forward, two steps back

Over at D-207, the most important goal should be halting the academic ranking slide that has seen Maine South drop from its historical top-ten spot to a slot in the 20s, even as costs have continued to rise and D-207 has some of the highest-paid teachers and administrators in the state.   But we’re not holding our collective breath waiting for that discussion to take place.

The Park Ridge Park District’s main event for 2014 should be the grand opening of the new Centennial water park this summer.  Despite our vigorous opposition to that almost $8 million project’s being approved without a referendum, we hope it will be successful and not another drain on the taxpayers, especially since those taxpayers were denied a vote on such a major Park District expenditure and debt for the first time since 1992.

2014 will likely bring a first for the Park Ridge Library – or, at least, a “first” in quite a while – as the recently-passed 2014-15 budget calls for the Library’s closure every Sunday from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  Closing on those Sundays will enable the Library to give employees a 1% pay increase, and to continue to provide patrons with free use of the Library’s computers, CDs, DVDs, and free attendance at its many programs.  DISCLOSURE:  The editor of this blog is a Library trustee; and he voted against the Sunday closure as an individual budget item, and against the budget that contained that closure.

The City will also continue to grapple with that economic black hole called the Uptown TIF, which is expected to swallow another million of our tax dollars on its way to what the City’s TIF consultants are projecting could be a $27 million hole by the TIF’s expiration in 2026. Discussion will again likely focus on advance refunding, which could save the City some signficant money but which is a one-time deal and timing-sensitive.

But the toughest question any local governmental body is likely to face this coming year is flood control.  We hope there will be an insightful and vigorous debate over whether or not to bond and spend tens of millions of dollars on flood control projects that carry the promise of protecting most affected areas from only those so-called “10-year” floods.

Having already committed hundreds (thousands?) of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees to come up with the Burke recommendations, and having already undertaken 7 relief sewer projects costing $5.3 million primarily for flood control purposes, we can see how the path of least resistance might be for the Council to issue a boatload of long-term, low-interest bonds to provide a little flood control for everybody – because most of the carping about flood control to date has been in the nature of what the late, great Mike Royko called the unofficial City of Chicago motto: “Ubi est mea?” (“Where’s mine?”).

That would be the worst kind of pandering, especially since 10-year floods seem to be virtually insignificant to the vast majority of residents and not worth the $100 million or so investment that would be required to implement all those remediation projects.

But if the Council decides it wants to go in that direction, we suggest it seriously consider creating a number of special service areas (“SSA”s) where the costs could be better targeted to those most directly benefitting from such low ROI remedies.  And if it decides on proceeding with any flood control plan that requires more than $10 million of cumulative expenditures or long-term debt, the final decision should be submitted to the taxpayers via referendum in November.

The forgoing are not intended to form a comprehensive list.  We expect other issues to pop up, and one  or more of them could take on major significance.  We invite our readers to submit any that we may have left off.

But whether good, bad or downright ugly, 2014 has the makings of an “interesting” year.

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Are our local public schools becoming a threat to Park Ridge property values?

Historically “our schools” has been an almost reflexive response to the question of what drives Park Ridge’s property values.  And for those residents whose homes might be their single most valuable asset, preserving the value of those homes and hoping they will appreciate is a major concern.  That means keeping Park Ridge an attractive and desirable community where current residents want to remain, and to where non-residents want to relocate.

For people living in the City of Chicago or outside the Chicagoland area and looking to purchase a home in the Chicago suburbs, why would they pick Park Ridge?

For those looking for a bedroom community close to the Loop, Park Ridge fills the bill.  The same goes for being close to O’Hare Airport, although that comes with a different set of concerns.  Another plus is that we’re almost equally convenient to the major shopping areas of Oak Brook Center, Woodfield Mall, Northbrook Court and Gurnee Mills.

But if high-ranking public schools are decisive, not even one Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 school can be found in the latest Chicago Sun-Times’ “Top 50” rankings of elementary and middle schools. 

That means house hunters are likely to consider Oak Brook (with a school ranked 11th), River Forest (12th), Naperville (with schools ranked 13th and 26th), Lincolnshire (14th), Hinsdale (15th, 30th and 49th), Wheaton (16th), Schaumburg (17th), Clarendon Hills (18th and 24th), Barrington (19th, 24th and 50th), Western Springs (22nd), Winnetka (23rd), Wilmette (28th and 35th), Hoffman Estates (29th), Northbrook (30th), Elmhurst (32nd, 39th and 47th), Palatine (33rd), Glenview (37th and 48th), Burr Ridge (38th), Buffalo Grove (40th), LaGrange (41st), Arlington Heights (41st), South Barrington (41st), Evanston (44th) and Deerfield (46th) a lot more attractive than Park Ridge.

And for those looking at middle schools rankings, Park Ridge will be taking a back seat to Wilmette (10th and 25th), Lincolnshire (13th), Oak Brook (15th), Northbrook (16th and 47th), Lisle (19th), Buffalo Grove (20th), Kenilworth (22nd), Western Springs (24th), River Forest (26th), Hinsdale (27th), Glencoe (29th), Long Grove (30th), Northfield (31st), Clarendon Hills (32nd), Hoffman Estates (33rd), Elmhurst (36th), Winnetka (38th), Deerfield (43rd), Burr Ridge (44th), Elk Grove Village (45th), Rolling Meadows (48th) and Naperville (49th and 50th).

The more sophisticated home buyers looking at communities which have ranked schools in both categories can choose from among Buffalo Grove, Burr Ridge, Clarendon Hills, Deerfield, Elmhurst, Hinsdale, Hoffman Estates, Lincolnshire, Naperville, Oak Brook, River Forest, Western Springs and Wilmette instead of Park Ridge.  And Elmhurst, River Forest and Western Springs are the virtual equals of Park Ridge when considering commutes to the Loop, with Burr Ridge, Hinsdale and Wilmette not far behind.

Worse yet, the flagship of Maine Twp. High School District 207, Maine South, has dropped from a 24th place ranking of high schools last year to a 26th place ranking this year.

So why should a potential home buyer pick Park Ridge?

It’s certainly not because of Park Ridge’s lower property taxes.  D-64’s property are higher than many of the school districts in those other communities, but without the benefit of elementary and middle schools in the Top 50.  While it’s possible the total tax bill for those other communities might be higher than the total tax bill for D-64 residents, it’s not very likely from the limited spot checking we did.

So while a number of Park Ridgians still insist that D-64 schools are outstanding and well worth the price of admission – like the D-64 teachers and administrators who have the biggest immediate stake in perpetuating the myth – objective measurements suggest otherwise.  And it’s starting to look like the underachievement that seems to have become institutionalized at D-64 may be trickling up to Maine South.

Not surprisingly, D-64 leadership is responding to the latest test results in the same vacuous fashion it employed in past years when confronting similarly mediocre performance results and rankings.  One only need read a few of the the edu-babble sound bites from D-64’s Assistant Supt. for Student Learning, Lori Hinton, contained in the District’s press release about these results, to appreciate the thoroughness of the denial, such as:

“As we look ahead, we believe that maintaining a clear focus on individual student growth – and the high-yield instructional strategies that support such growth – will help us fuel ongoing improvement in student achievement.”  

We’re more accustomed to hearing the term “high-yield” used to describe strategic nuclear devices, but we probably shouldn’t be surprised to see the high cost, low accountability educational establishment emulating the high cost, low accountability military establishment.

Or how about this bon mot from Ms. Hinton:

“District 64 teachers in recent years have become more skilled at reviewing data to identify student needs and differentiating instruction for small groups of students, and we will be boosting professional development for teachers on these high yield instructional strategies.” 

Are you getting the idea that “high yield instructional strategies” might be the newest catch-phrase among D-64 administrators?

And finishing on a high note:

“The District’s mean scores have increased over the past five years at all grade levels in reading and math, and our students continue to achieve at levels significantly higher than national means.”

Memo to Ms. Hinton: Park Ridge is nothing close to a “national means” community when it comes to household income, home prices, taxes, and other conventional measures of affluence.  So why are you even talking about “national means” as a benchmark for our kids’ academic performance… other than to divert attention from the fact that their performance doesn’t match up with truly comparable communities in the Chicagoland area?

We can think of a variety of explanations for D-64’s underachievement on standardized testing and test score-based rankings.  One might be that Park Ridge is attracting increasing numbers of residents with  more modest intellectual capacity who, in turn, produce progeny of similarly unspectacular capacity.  That might provoke howls of outrage, but let the howlers produce better explanations – or at least better ones than D-64’s old standby that it doesn’t “teach to the test,” an alibi which usually is spoken with a dismissive pseudo-snobbish sneer of disdain that denigrates the very concept of standardized testing. 

Not surprisingly, neither “Improving the District’s academic ranking” nor “Improving standardized testing performance” were among the criteria for choosing a new superintendent listed on the BWP anonymous survey

So long as D-64 officials – including our elected school board members who are charged with safeguarding the taxpayers’ interest – continue to fiddle while the District’s ranking burns, our property values are likely to be increasingly at risk.  And as more questions about measurable performance and the quality of instruction arise, factors such as increased air traffic from O’Hare expansion can be expected to take on added signficance and exert increasing downward pressure on property values.

That’s not a spiral anybody should want to see our community begin.

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