Monday night the District 207 Board of Education unanimously said “No” to the Maine Teachers Association, a/k/a the teachers union, when it voted to go ahead with its plan to cut 137 jobs, including 75 teaching jobs.

That was the fiscally responsible decision, and we applaud it – even though Board member Eric Leys was visibly uncomfortable bucking the teachers, and Board member Sean Sullivan sent yet another clear signal of the Board’s pliability when he noted that this decision could be rescinded later this month if there were “negotiations.”

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the fiscal buffoonery of our local governments – especially our two school boards – over the past couple of decades, Sullivan’s comments mean that the Board is eager to roll over and dip into the District’s reserves in response to virtually any “concession” the teachers union might offer.

That’s because the management tradition of both the District 207 Board and the District 64 Board (members of whom are hand-picked by the District 64 & District 207 School Caucus, then rubber stamped by the voters in uncontested elections) is one of weakness and fuzzy thinking, when they think at all.  So it’s easy for them to ignore the fact that the teachers (especially the more senior ones) and most of the administrators are already overcompensated, thanks to years of mindless giveaways by teachers in “administrator” clothing and go-along-to-get-along board members.

Want proof of the weakness and fuzzy thinking? 

Just look at the “compromise” District 207 has already offered the union.  Despite saying how important it was not to dip further into the District’s reserve fund, the Board nevertheless offered to do just that – in an unspecified amount – if the union would agree to lower the pay increases that the Board foolishly gave away in the last contract negotiation, and also agree to a one-year freeze on the cost-of-living increase.

In other words, because the District 207 Board previously gave away the store, it is now begging the teachers to return a can of corn.

That’s just plain spineless, and it explains why the union responded so shamelessly, with union president Emma Visee promptly demanding that the District throw its “compromise” money (from the reserve fund) into the pot, irrespective of whether the union agrees to any concessions.

“If you have identified $2 million you can spend for the students, then do so,” said Visee.

Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll want a glass of milk. 

Except in the case of the teachers union, the mouse is more of a gorilla.  And as we’ve seen time and time again, it’s not going to settle for just a glass of milk.

So kudos for now, District 207 Board. But we’re still sticking with our prediction that you will sell out the taxpayers, once again, before this is over.

One of our favorite quotes, often attributed to Julian Bond, is: “In a contest between the shameless and the spineless, the shameless always win.”  And nowhere does that seem to be proved more frequently than in local government, where bumbling bureaucrats and feckless elected officials combine to mismanage our institutions and our tax dollars.

Tonight at 7:00 p.m., the District 207 School Board will be meeting at the Maine South H.S. auditorium to discuss what is looking like the latest spineless maneuver by the Board to appease its lord and master: the Maine Teachers Association, a/k/a, the teachers’ union.

As we reported in the 1/30/10 Update to our 1/26/10 post, “When The Inmates Run The Asylum,” District 207 is now planning to dip into its reserves when, just a couple of weeks ago, it was saying that it could not prudently do so.  That kind of flip flop reminds us of the classic courtroom cross examination question: “Are you lying now, or were you lying then?”

But with teachers playing administrators/businesspersons, and elected officials playing politicians, lying and ignorant incompetence are hard to separate.

Whether the District 207 Board and administration is lying, incompetent or just plain gutless, however, is beside the point: The teachers’ union is shameless, and has been so for at least the past decade.  That’s why teachers are getting paid sizeable annual salaries for only 2/3 or 3/4 of an actual work year, depending on how you count and consider vacation days, holidays, sick days, paid leave days, teacher institute (snicker) days, etc.

And they continue to receive something so wonderful, and so costly, that it has become virtually extinct in the real, private-sector world in which most of us toil: the defined benefit pension.  And let’s not forget tenure, and a job which has positively no chance of being relocated to another state or country.

Fed up with teachers’ union greed?  One of our readers, Kenneth Butterly, is.  And he sent us a copy of his letter [pdf] to District 207 and the case study [pdf] he refers to in his letter, along with the permission to publish both of them. 

Just to show we’re not unfair, however, we are also providing the MTA’s “Myth vs. Reality” propaganda sheet [pdf], which we obtained from its website and which focuses primarily on criticizing bad budgeting, accounting and management by the District’s administration and Board. 

We can’t disagree with that.  But that alone doesn’t mean the teachers aren’t greedy and unreasonable, especially when the District’s mismanagement consists in no small measure of constantly caving in to the teachers’ demands. 

Tonight we will see whether the School Board has a spine of steel or of mush. 

We hope we’re wrong, but we’re betting on the latter.  Because we know that, once again, the teachers union will be shameless.

If you’re one of the thousands of District 207 taxpayers who don’t have any children currently enrolled in, or soon to be enrolled in, one of the District’s high schools, you probably didn’t attend last Wednesday’s budget meeting at Maine East H.S.  That’s because those kinds of meetings aren’t made for you.

They’re made for demonstrations like the one the tearful students staged to save the jobs of approximately 75 non-tenured teachers who may be cut from the payroll to help fill what is looking more and more like a $19 million hole in the District’s 2010-11 budget.  

Never mind that such a “spontaneous” outpouring of student sentiment appears to have been orchestrated by the teachers’ union – it’s still great theater.  And great theater provides an easy “human interest” story for a superficial news media, which explains why the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate devoted an entire story to reporting student comments (“District 207: ‘We are a family here to fight against you’”) in addition to featuring student comments in its only other story on the meeting (“District 207 board hears impassioned pleas to spare teachers’ jobs”).

After all, why should our local papers struggle to analyze tough issues – like why so many individual teachers are making more than the annual Park Ridge median household income despite working only 8 months a year in jobs that can’t be outsourced or relocated, with pensions and benefits better than what are enjoyed by most of the folks paying their salaries – when its reporters can interview a few teenagers and write a warm-and-fuzzy about losing their favorite teachers or coaches because other teachers wouldn’t forego their raises this year?   

Those meetings are also made for the parents of those tearful students to show up and complain that they pay taxes and, consequently, their children deserve every educational benefit imaginable no matter what the cost – and no matter that their annual tax payments to District 207 barely make a dent in the actual cost of educating just one of their children.

After all, as Maine East science teacher Dana Nixon stated at the meeting: “A quality education is more than reading, writing and arithmetic.”  Indeed it is, which is why teachers and administrators can make a case for including Mandarin Chinese, fencing, cloisonné, field trips to Machu Pichu and even embalming among the offerings of a “complete” high school curriculum.

And those meetings are made for the school administrators to put on their concerned faces and act like they know what they’re doing, even though all of them are former teachers’ union members who retain the union entitlement mindset and who lack the formal business education or experience needed to run a successful card-table lemonade stand, much less the $100+ million a year business that is District 207.

The bottom line is that, if you are the average District 207 taxpayer, there are only two things standing between you and District 207’s (and District 64’s) pillaging of your pocketbook: tax caps and your elected members school board members.

The District 207 board members may be fine people, but what proven business education or experience do they have to act as directors of a $100+ million business, especially when they are overseeing a CEO (a/k/a, the superintendant) and operations officers (a/k/a, staff) who themselves are functionally clueless when it comes to business theory and strategy? 

According to the District 207 website, three of those board members (Margaret McGrath, Edward Mueller and Sean Sullivan) are attorneys, the last of whom is also the vice-president of business affairs (whatever that entails) at Triton College; two of them (Eldon Burk and Donna Pellar) are retired teachers, one of whom (Pellar) has a masters degree in “School Administration” (whatever that entails); one of them (Joann Braam) has a masters degree in social science; and one of them (Eric Leys) doesn’t even list any college education or an occupation. 

That’s it.  No MBAs and no demonstrated private sector experience running even a small business.  Just a bunch of business-“blind” union-sympathizing teacher/administrators leading a bunch of business-“blind” school board members.  No wonder the teachers’ union runs things…and why teachers’ raises appear to be outpacing the rate of inflation even during a recession.

So don’t be surprised if all those non-business types running District 207 come up with a “solution” that will involve dipping into the District’s reserves and further jeopardizing its long-term financial future for a quick and easy “fix” today.

When will this insanity stop? 

Not until somebody stops the inmates from running the asylum.

Update 1/30/10.  According to a statement issued by the District 207 administration, it is proposing a plan to “save” 40-45 of the approx. 75 teaching jobs scheduled to be cut – by…wait for it…”‘tap[ping] deeper into its fund balance reserve and commit[ting] up to an additional $2 million in deficit spending’ over the next two fiscal years.” (“New offer by District 207 could spare 45 teachers,” Jan. 29) 

We’d like to take a bow for calling that shot but, after years of watching shameless teachers’ unions and spineless/clueless school administrations, that kind of prediction is like shooting fish in a barrel. 

And, not surprisingly for spineless school administrators and their clueless school board overseers, the District 207 statement does not say just how deeply it will be dipping into those reserves, even as it disclosed that the teachers would still be receiving their “step” pay increases and their 3.5% cost-of-living increase (which appears to triple-plus the actual increase in the cost of living!) for the upcoming school year – in return for giving up only their 3.2% COLA the following year. 

Looks like yet another tower of jello negotiation strategy by District 207. 

We did get a kick, however, out of Supt. Ken Wallace’s mealy-mouthed, public relations propaganda statement touting this proposal:

“While this doesn’t solve our financial situation, it buys us some time to do long-term planning with various stakeholders to be in better position ourselves to deal with these difficult economic times going forward.  In light of the difficult economic times that our communities are experiencing, we hope this proposal is a win-win.”

Yes, Ken…a “win-win” for the teachers’ union, as in: “Heads the teachers’ union wins, tails the taxpayers lose.”

Brilliant!

Recently we had some kind words for the District 207 teachers when it sounded as if they were going to hold the District to its contract but kick back enough of their pay increases to save the jobs of their non-tenured teachers union members who were otherwise going to be chopped to help the District fill the gaping $19 million budget hole for the coming year.

Well, the teachers union sure fooled us.

Wednesday night at Maine East High School, union brotherhood/sisterhood went the way of common sense, fiscal responsibility and basic altruism, as union officials and tenured teachers demanded that the District draw down its reserve fund in order to keep everybody – except the taxpayers – fully employed, properly enriched and reasonably happy. 

In the process, the teachers union and its supporters appear to have callously exploited their well-meaning but naïve students, who we understand were “encouraged” to attend the meeting and voice their opposition to the District’s belated recognition of fiscal reality.  After all, it’s common knowledge that weeping teenagers are even better than puppies and kittens for tugging at heartstrings and interfering with clear-headed thinking.

Just because the union and its backers were shameless, however, doesn’t mean that that the District’s board didn’t show it could be spineless.

To the contrary, Board president Ed Mueller sounded like a typical politician when he seemingly blamed every external force except the Haitian earthquake for the District’s deficit, while making sure that not a hint of blame or accountability fell on him or his board.  Amazingly enough, after blaming tax caps for contributing to the District’s revenue shortfalls, Mueller bizarrely announced that the board has ruled out any referendum to exceed the tax caps – a position supported by Supt. Ken Wallace, who said it would “not be responsible” to ask the taxpayers to vote to bail out the district.

In other words, folks, what they’re telling us is that, if not for those darn tax caps, they could have gone ahead and raised our taxes to fill the budget hole without having to get our permission via referendum and without having to cut anything. 

That sounds like Exhibit A to the case for why we need tax caps!

But if revenues really are such a problem, why not at least ask the voters if they want to lift the caps to send more bucks to District 207 – before it turns into a real crisis, like the one District 64’s board caused during the first half of the last decade, when it foolishly refused to go to referendum until its finances were so shaky that the State Board of Education was reportedly considering taking over their management? 

Are Mueller and Wallace afraid a huge “no” vote might seem too much like a referendum on the board’s stewardship of District 207?  Is the teachers union afraid such a vote might be perceived as an indictment of the teachers’ greed?  Or are both sides afraid that such a vote might make it more difficult for them to tap into those District 207 reserves, which we’re still betting will end up being the dirty little deal that gets done before the final curtain falls on this particular drama.

One voice of reason did stand out above the grumbling and caterwauling, however.  Mike Bender, a Maine East teacher and softball coach who is on the chopping block, publicly asked his union to reopen negotiations with the District.  

We know virtually nothing about Mr. Bender, but he gets a Watchdog bark-out for having the courage to make such a request, albeit self-serving, in what he had to know was a hostile forum.  Not surprisingly, his request was openly mocked by his union brethren (and sistren?), who already had shown that they have no reservations about “playing chicken” with the District over the jobs of non-tenured teachers like Bender, or the long-term financial soundness of the District.  

Bender will be lucky if mockery is the only consequence of his speaking truth to power.  That’s because when it comes to our public schools, the teachers unions hold all the power.  And when it comes to their wallets, they have no use for truth.  

As we enter both a new year and a new decade, it’s a good time to look both backwards and forwards at not only our City government but also those other branches of government that primarily service our community, and take stock of where we came from and where we are going financially. 

The years 2000 through 2009 were characterized by spending, spending and more spending, enabled by taxing and borrowing – even though all that spending does not appear to have provided us with better quality infrastructure or services. 

For example, the City of Park Ridge pretty much neglected its sewer system for the past decade, failing to perform needed systemic inspection, maintenance and repairs – not only under Mayor Ron “Damn O’Hare!” Wietecha and the sclerotic Homeowners Party, but also under Acting-Mayor Mike Marous and the “Independents” (non-Homeowner aldermen) and even more so under Mayor Howard Frimark and his Alderpuppets.  Flood control and remediation also were ignored while new development and redevelopment actually increased flooding risks and demands on our sewer systems.

Although its academic standing generally remained stable over the decade, High School District 207 currently is trying to cope with a $17 million “structural budget deficit.”  Meanwhile, during the first part of the decade Elementary School District 64 spent itself to the brink of Illinois State Board of Education intervention [pdf] before bailing itself out with a “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue to make payroll in 2005 [pdf], followed by a major referendum-based tax increase in 2007 – neither of which has produced consistent, notable gains in student performance, even as the District has gone about restoring many of the $12.2 million in cuts it made while claiming they would not impair educational quality.  (So why restore them?) 

Even the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the smallest-budget branch of local government, continues to bungle the management of its outdoor swimming pools (which look to have booked another operating loss approaching $100,000 once the December figures are in [pdf]) and an almost $200,000 loss on the Senior Center [pdf], while still being bedeviled by the management of problematic facilities like the do-not-resuscitate Oakton Pool and the poorly-designed Community Center.

Fortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, the schools and the Park District are non-home rule bodies whose ability to raise taxes is limited by what are known (fondly to many taxpayers) as “tax caps.”  Not so the home-rule City government, where spending is limited only by whatever sense of shame City officials can muster about their fiscal mismanagement.  And for most of the past 10 years those officials have been pretty darned shameless.

So what can we expect from these governmental bodies in 2010?

Well, District 207 is proposing to cut expenditures by $15 million and raise revenues $2 million [pdf] to fill that $17 million budget hole.  Part of those cuts will come from a freeze of administrators’ salaries and from the District 207 teachers’ voluntary salary increase give-back program, which they are exploring as an enlightened alternative to the District’s cutting of approximately 75 teacher jobs.

District 64, on the other hand, recently approved an approximately 4.9% property tax levy increase for the 2009 tax year – with only board member Russ Gentile voting “no” [pdf].  And, according to its November 10, 2009, press release [pdf], the District is already starting to waffle on its pre-2007 referendum 10-year financial projections, despite amassing very healthy budget surpluses these last two years.  But what should we expect when the District’s School Board and Administration just gave the teachers’ union members annual raises of approximately 4.5% (including step increases) over the next three years, even though (as the press release acknowledges) the Consumer Price Index increase in 2008 “was just 0.1%”? 

And if what was included in the Park Board’s December meeting package is any indication, the Park District looks to be predicting its own budget deficit of between $800,000 and $1.1 million [pdf], depending on which of two revenue projections is ultimately adopted by the Park Board later this month.  It also appears that $300,000+ of that deficit can once again be attributed to Oakton Pool and the Senior Center, thereby providing further proof of the correctness of Einstein’s definition of insanity.

And the City?  At this point in time, it looks like Mayor Schmidt’s plan for some form of zero-based budgeting is a pipe dream – what with City Mgr. Jim Hock loudly objecting, City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on her way to Gurnee, and the Council majority of deficit-wallowing Alderpuppets installed by former mayor Frimark seemingly incapable of performing subtraction when it comes to City expenditures.

Last May we provided our own simple way to almost balance the City budget (“How To Balance The City Budget,” May 27, 2009) – we came up $49,700 short on the $2 million, which we left for self-proclaimed budget “hawk” Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) to take care of.  Fortunately, we didn’t hold our breath for that to occur.    

Which sets the table for Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti and his Council cronies to push through the highly-questionable Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboard deal as $400,000 of “found money” that the City would be foolish to turn down – notwithstanding the City Attorney’s preliminary opinion that such an “impact fee” might not be legally enforceable or even constitutional, and despite the whole Allegretti-engineered, City-as-applicant arrangement stinking up the entire Council chambers.

One thing does look pretty certain, however: the taxpayers likely will take a trimming from every branch of local government, to go with the ones they will take from the State of Illinois and Crook County; and that trimming will likely be accompanied by reduced services from most, if not all, branches of local government.

So Happy New Year…and welcome to the 2010 edition of fiscally mismanaged local governments gone wild.

As another year comes to a close, we here at PublicWatchdog hope that we have helped make local government more transparent, understandable and accountable to the taxpayers who fund it; and that we also have helped shine a spotlight on those who would abuse the public trust of government, or manipulate it for their own benefit to the detriment of the community as a whole.  We also promise to try to do even better in 2010.

In that spirit, we offer the following quotes:

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.  It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.”
            Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
            Edmund Burke

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”
            James Madison, Federalist No. 51

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government”
            Thomas Jefferson

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.  It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
            Robert Maynard Hutchins

And with that, we wish all of you a happy, vigilant, active, passionate, engaged and well-nourished New Year.

If what is reported in today’s Park Ridge Journal is true (“Teachers Keep Lid On Contract,” December 16), we want to give a Watchdog bark-out to the Maine Teachers Association (“MTA”) for what sounds like an innovative win/win solution to Dist. 207’s recently-disclosed financial problems.

While rejecting the D-207 school administration’s request to reopen contract negotiations for the purpose of permitting salary freezes and other reductions intended to avert cutting 75 jobs for an approximately $5 million savings, the MTA has suggested a voluntary payroll reduction which – if we understand it correctly – would divert a portion of teachers’ paychecks to the D-207 educational foundation for the funding of the positions that otherwise would be cut.

In other words, the teachers are stepping up to the plate to save their own, and their fellow teachers’, jobs.

Many private sector employees who don’t have the job, wages and benefits security provided by contracts like the ones enjoyed by most teachers have effectively done the same thing, only in a different way: by accepting wage freezes, and/or wage and benefit cuts, in lieu of layoffs.  As we see it, the MTA proposal gets D-207 to the same place.

A win/win that preserves the bargained-for contract rights while acknowledging and addressing the District’s precarious financial circumstances is a good thing.  And we would like to think that the concept of teachers sacrificing for each other – or, more accurately, for those unidentified 75 who were going to get sacked – in this way might also build some additional esprit de corps among the teachers.

This solution is not yet a done deal, however.  As MTA president Emma Visee acknowledges: “We don’t know yet how it will work.” 

Hopefully, the respective parties can overcome the devil that always seems to be in the details and make this solution a reality sooner rather than later.  Because even with a plan that provides the District with the $5 million it hoped to save by those 75 layoffs, there is still an additional $12 million in deficits that the District needs to address.  And that ain’t chicken feed.

But for the time being, this looks like a big step in the right direction which deserves a pat on the back all around.

And it should serve as a shining example to our other governmental bodies and their employees to consider as they cope with their own financial struggles. 

The Common Sense Chief. With the often mindless “nanny state” mentality encroaching into our daily lives with increasing frequency, we want to give a big Watchdog bark-out to Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski for his common-sense approach to the problem known as “distracted driving.” 

Chief K was asked to look into whether a hands-free cell phone ordinance like the one the demented midget who runs Chicago instituted might be worth enacting here.  Instead of blindly jumping on that misguided bandwagon, Chief K wisely noted in his memo [pdf] that such an ordinance would pose compliance/enforcement problems.  But where we give him extra credit is for his recognition that “the data also proves that this [distraction] occurs whether cell phones are hand-held or hands free” – not unlike it occurs for those nitwits who apply makeup or shave while driving.

Good call, Chief!

Just Do Your Job.  During Monday night’s City Council discussion of zero-based budgeting, Fifth Ward Ald. Robert Ryan suggested the formation of a citizens task force to help the Council (and Staff?) figure out ways to balance the City budget after yet another multi-million dollar deficit that Ryan voted for.  

Sorry, alderman, but formulating a balanced budget is something that City Staff is being well-paid to do, and competently overseeing that effort is something you and your fellow alder-critters signed on for when you ran for your seats around The Horseshoe.  Since we don’t recall any of you professing fiscal incompetence when you were running for office, don’t now try to push your responsibilities off on people who neither sought, nor have taken the oath of, your offices.

If the Staff and/or the Council can’t or won’t do the jobs they signed on for, then we need to find that out sooner rather than later and take appropriate steps to replace them.  What we don’t need are private citizens being conscripted to effectively serve as enablers and concealers of City governmental incompetence.

It’s Coming!  Next Wednesday (December 16) night the Gene Spanos/Joe Karaganis traveling road show is coming to the South Park Field House, as flyers [pdf] in this week’s Park Ridge Journal are announcing.  According to those flyers, the meeting will address “our next step toward a class action lawsuit for all who are impacted by the negative side effects of the ORD re-configuration – 2014 O’Hare Plan.”

We strongly encourage a big turnout for this meeting so that as many Park Ridge residents as possible – from all areas of town – are present to hear about what we suspect will be a grand and glorious plan to take on all comers in a litigation death match: the City of Chicago, the FAA, the EPA, the airlines, the ONCC, etc.  And we hope questions are asked about how much that plan is going to cost, and how it’s going to be paid for.

It’s Unanimous!  Maine South’s University of Indiana-bound running back Matt Perez recently made it unanimous when the Chicago Tribune concurred with the Chicago Sun-Times’ selection of him as the Player of the Year in high school football.  Perez not only excelled while running and catching the ball, but he also was a defensive standout and special teams force for the Hawk’s repeat state championship squad.

Over the past two years that he has played a starring role in his team’s achievements, we repeatedly have heard about his dedication and work ethic.  So it’s great to see how he has successfully turned all that hard work into such outstanding performance that it earned the recognition he is receiving. 

Well done, Matt!

One of the things that (in our opinion) has eroded the quality of performance and commitment in our society, especially for our children, is the “self-esteem” movement.  Or, more accurately, the false self-esteem movement, where praise is thrown around like confetti irrespective of effort, achievement or outcome.

So leave it to the Maine South Hawks football team to provide an object lesson in real, hard-earned self-esteem – with their dominating state championship victory Saturday night over Marist High School.  Repeat state championships, especially in the top class of the tournament structure, are rare due to things like player graduations and the hackneyed, but true, concept that anybody can beat anybody else on any given day.

But Coach Dave Inserra and his staff obviously have taught their kids what it takes to be successful.  And we suspect that many of these young champions may have started learning those lessons even before they got to Maine South, from the coaches of the highly-successful Falcons feeder program.

What can be said about Matt Perez that isn’t already encompassed in the words “Player of the Year”?  If he hadn’t already earned that award prior to Saturday night, he would have locked it up beyond a doubt with his almost-unbelievable performance in the championship game – “almost-unbelievable” only because we’ve seen too many similar ones from him to be surprised or to question.

And senior Tyler Benz – who could have been the starting quarterback at most schools for 2 or 3 years – ran the offense, and the ball, with the confidence of a college QB.

Our list of raves could go on and on.  But we think that the attitude which best describes what Maine South football is all about – and why the self-esteem those kids feel is genuine rather than false – was voiced by senior safety Mike Divito (as quoted in one of the local newspapers) after last week’s semi-final victory over Loyola Academy, in response to being asked to explain how well his under-rated defensive unit performed:

“I’d say it’s mostly heart,” DiVito said. “I’ve probably had about a total of six weeks off from football the past two years, and that’s the way it is for all of us. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Football is our passion, and on defense we truly believe that defense wins championships.”

Passion and commitment.  Two of the qualities most essential to both individual and team success.

So congratulations to the Hawks!  Once again, you’ve earned the right to call yourselves “champions.”  

Over the years, District 64 has been a test site for a number of academic and administrative “pilot” programs, many of which never got off the ground or which crashed and burned shortly after becoming airborne.

But Monday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune carried an article about a kind of “pilot” program (“School districts retooling how they evaluate teachers,” by John Keilman) that should be a must-read for the school board members and administrators at Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 – but, given the District’s track in matters like this, probably won’t be.

According to that article, Evanston-Skokie School District 65 has embarked on a program of evaluating teachers using a two-part process that will include an appraisal of classroom teaching style and an examination of the test scores of the children taught by that teacher.  The test-score portion is based on the difference between test scores at the beginning and at the end of the school year.

For a teacher to earn an “excellent” rating on a scale of “excellent,” “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory,” he/she is expected to enable no less than one low-scoring child to improve one grade level, while also enabling the rest of the class to gain a full year’s worth of educational growth irrespective of the level at which the child started the year.  And to be fair to the teacher, a child’s test scores can be discounted for appropriate cause – for example, if the child missed a significant portion of school due to illness. 

In order to receive a “merit” pay increase, the teacher must receive at least one “excellent” rating over a period of several years.  That sounds a little like an escape clause, but we can’t tell for sure.

One impetus for such performance-based teacher evaluation is coming from the New Teacher Project, a non-profit group based in Brooklyn, N.Y. which focuses on improving teacher quality.  In a recently-released study, it found that administrators tend to give top ratings to teachers even at schools with miserable test results.  Consequently, teachers are rarely fired, and merit-pay rarely is based on true “merit.”

Ah, yes, the insanity of “tenure” (a/k/a “guaranteed lifetime employment”) for elementary and high school teachers.

Obviously, a change like this will be neither simple or easy, especially when dealing with an industry – and, make no mistake about it, public education is an “industry” which, in Park Ridge, consumes almost two-thirds of our property tax dollars when both elementary and high school are included – that has virtually institutionalized non-accountability of teachers, administrators and the school board itself.

But perhaps one small benefit of the current economic crisis is that such sacred cows as ever-increasing teacher and administrator pay, pensions, etc. are being held just a tad less sacred.

Given the relatively mediocre performance of District 64 students on the ISAT tests which, rightly or wrongly, get the most attention from parents and the media, we think the District owes it to its students and the taxpayers to give a serious look at “piloting” this kind of teacher evaluation – and a program of merit pay based on such evaluations.

Because with homes on the brink or going into foreclosure at record levels and residents hurting financially to an extent not seen in decades, District 64’s business-as-usual just isn’t cutting it anymore.

P.S.:  We want to give a big Watchdog bark-out to Dist. 207 Supt. Ken Wallace for foregoing a $26,950 merit-based pay raise as a symbol of his commitment to reduce District 207’s $17 million “structural deficit.”  He joins Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt, who has foresworn his entire $12,000 annual mayoral salary, as two local government leaders who are at least showing some recognition for real-world employment insecurity and fiscal responsibility, two things about which the pandering politicians, bureaucrats and lifetime government employees too often seem oblivious.

Well done, Mr. Wallace!