Last week the Board of Education of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 made it official: Laurie Heinz is the District’s next superintendent and will be taking the reins from Philip Bender in June.

Ms. Heinz, currently an assistant superintendent with Skokie School District 68, was the last candidate standing – through no fault of her own – when the other finalist, Evergreen Park Elementary School District 124 superintendent Robert Machak, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration after his day-long visit to D-64.  Whether he was scared away by what he saw during that visit, or whether he just had second thoughts about leaving his current position, or whether District 124 made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (with or without horse’s head), is not known.

But, frankly, that’s water under the bridge, as is the flakey hiring process that started with a terribly flawed, if not outright silly, “Leadership Profile” survey dreamed up by the high-priced consultants over at BWP & Associates, and ended with the School Board hiding in closed session meeting after closed session meeting , even as its members were bragging about this being the most transparent process ever.

Compared to the Vatican’s papal selection process, maybe.  But calling it “transparent” clearly redefines that term, even in the parallel universe of local government.

Like an untested athlete picked in the first round of the draft, Heinz reportedly got a three-year deal with a starting salary of $201,000 and a total compensation package valued at $243,010.  There has been no mention of any incentive bonuses for achievements – like making the all-administrator team, winning the Most Valuable Superintendent award, or landing even one D-64 school in the Chicagoland Top 50 rankings based on standardized test scores.

Since the “transparent” D-64 still hasn’t posted Heinz’s contract on its website – at least not where we can find it – we’ll have to rely on the District’s 01.31.14 Press Release for those details for now.

School Board president Tony Borrelli called Heinz “someone who will provide direction, find answers, give input and, most importantly, pull the various elements of our district together so that all oars are pulling together for the common goal of developing this district to be one of the highest performing districts in the state of Illinois.”

If she can do that, she will be worth every penny the D-64 taxpayers are paying her.

But we’ve heard that kind of happy heifer dust before…whenever D-64 hires another superintendent.  Or when it comes up with some new “silver bullet” scheme heralding sea-change improvement in academic performance, like when it embraced the “middle school” concept in order to manufacture the need for the new Emerson school building back in 1997.  All that produced was a mini-financial crisis 8 years later and another tax hike referendum in 2007, with no objectively-measurable improvement in educational performance or rankings.

The District’s 01.29.14 Press Release is loaded with all sorts of school-oriented public relations jargon like “work seemlessly,” “best maximize,” “collaborative groups,” “seek an endpoint,” “earmarked,” “vibrant yet controlled” and “push personal boundaries.”  While these are attributed to president Borrelli, they sound a lot more like D-64 spin-meister Bernadette Tramm’s handiwork.

For her part, Ms. Heinz is saying and doing all the right things (although terms like “continued success,” “fresh perspective” and “leveraging community and Board of Education involvement” also sound like 100% pure Tramm) and we sincerely wish her well.  If she succeeds, her success will redound to the benefit not only of the children in her charge, but also to the benefit of the D-64 taxpayers who have suffered from the upward spiraling D-64 tax burden while objectively-measurable student performance has stagnated or declined – and may be taking Maine South’s ranking down with it.

But make no mistake about it: Ms. Heinz is a mercenary.  She does not hail from Park Ridge, nor does she live and pay taxes here.  The superintendent’s position is simply a career move for her, not a long-term commitment to this community.

Her “investment” here will be limited to her time and effort – for which she will be handsomely compensated, not only while she is working but also by a guaranteed pension that could pay her an additional $3-4 million after she retires from public education.  And if things don’t work out for her at D-64 after 3 years, she can move on – almost three quarters of a million dollars richer – without any disruption to her and her family’s life.

That’s not her fault, either, but just another aspect of the absurdity that infects public employment in Illinois.

We do, however, find it odd that Ms. Heinz, a newly-minted superintendent, will apparently be paid the same as a seasoned superintendent like Bender.  Why that is the case is unclear, although we find it interesting that Board member Dan Collins, in casting the only “no” vote for Heinz’s compensation package, referred to how his fellow Board members already knew all his reasons for that vote – presumably because they heard them in all those closed sessions.

Chalk that up as another information casualty from this faux-transparent Board.

But from what we’ve seen and heard so far, we have to trust that Ms. Heinz can do the job.  Whether the Board can do its job, however, remains the real unanswered question.

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Long ago we learned a valuable lesson about government, especially local government: almost nothing good occurs in “closed session” – when local governmental bodies meet without the public or the press allowed to be present to watch, listen and learn;  and with no minutes published unless the governmental body expressly authorizes their publication.

Which is almost never.

Closed sessions violate the spirit of open government and, therefore, the circumstance in which they can occur – and the topics that can be discussed in them – are limited by the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”).  While a public body is permitted to go into closed session, closed sessions are never required.  Additionally, no formal action, such as the enactment of new laws or the passage of resolutions, can occur during the closed session: the public body must reconvene into open session to do those things.

But since most closed sessions seem to occur at the end of the “public” portion of meetings, by the time the closed sessions end and the officials emerge from the darkness and into the light, there often is no “public” or press hanging around to witness and address the formal action that gets voted on.

Not that many years ago most public officials – virtually ALL bureaucrats, and the vast majority of elected officials – operated from the premise that what was discussed in closed sessions was SECRET and could not even be disclosed or disussed outside of the closed session.  Obviously, shameless and spineless public officials who like nothing more than to run and hide from their constituents in closed session don’t want anybody revealing whatever tomfoolery they concocted while free from public scrutiny.

At the City Council level it took then-alderman, now Mayor Dave Schmidt to dispel that misguided belief (or wishful thinking) that closed session discussions and information are “secret.”  Schmidt took the unprecedented step of publicly blowing the whistle on then-mayor Howard Frimark’s closed session efforts to persuade the Council to buy the 720 Garden property as the future site of a new police station, even though the Council had not yet even decided on whether or not to build a new cop shop – and at a price a couple/few hundred thousand dollars more than the City’s own appraiser said it was worth.

Not surprisingly, Frimark and his alderpuppets were outraged by Schmidt’s disclosure.  Frimark not only denounced Schmidt but also proposed a Council resolution formally “condemning” Schmidt and his disclosures.  Because “condemnation” of a City alderman has no legal consequences, however, Frimark’s show-trial and 5-1 vote approving that condemnation resolution were merely exercises in futility – and may have even helped launch Schmidt’s subsequently successful bid to unseat Frimark.

Since Schmidt became mayor, closed sessions have become far fewer and farther in between.

But at Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, closed sessions seem to be the preferred way of doing business, as evidenced by the recent hiring process for the new superintendent.

We discussed some of the shortcomings of that process in our 12.27.13 and 01.08.14 posts, so we won’t recount those here.  But more recent – and arguably more egregious – abuses of closed session deserves a special dishonorable mention.

At a special meeting last Friday (01.24.14), the D-64 Board scurried into closed session almost immediately after convening so that members could discuss the compensation package they intended to offer the new superintendent, Laurie Heinz.  Not surprisingly, the motion for closed session was made by D-64’s own prince of darkness, John Heyde, whose adoration of closed sessions (and secrecy generally) might well be unparalleled in local government over the past decade or two, save for perhaps Frimark’s.

Heyde so relishes closed sessions and secrecy that not only did he advocate conducting teachers union contract negotiations in secret, but he actually built a legal requirement for closed-session negotiations into the contracts he negotiated.  That provision guarantees that the taxpayers don’t get to see or hear the exorbitant opening demands that the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”) is rumored to make whenever it opens contract negotiations, or see or hear all the ankle-grabbing concessions and outright appeasement by our elected officials who are supposed to be looking out for the taxpayers’ interests and the best interest of the District.

So we fully expected Heyde and his fellow travelers on the D-64 Board to want the same freedom from the prying eyes of the taxpayers and the press when it came to the Board’s formulation of the compensation package being offered to Heinz.  And Heyde, et al., did not disappoint last Friday evening.

But Board president Tony Borrelli threw a wrench into Heyde’s plans by suggesting that the discussions of the new superintendent’s contract offer be held in open session.

For the most fleeting of moments, Borrelli’s suggestion seemed to freeze Heyde and his closed-session allies like deer caught in a car’s headlights – before Heyde regained his balance and mumbled an explanation for why closed session was necessary:  the Board’s “strategizing for a contract negotiation” should not be done in open session because it would give the new superintendent the District’s negotiating game plan.

You can watch and listen to Heyde’s oratory – and the 6-1 vote (Borrelli dissenting) to go into closed session – by checking out the meeting video and fast-forwarding to the 1:30 mark.

What Heyde can’t seem to figure out – or won’t publicly admit – is that the Board is under no obligation to “negotiate” with Ms. Heinz.  The Board could have, and should have, publicly formulated all of the elements of the compensation package it was offering Heinz, and explained why that package is fair and reasonable to Heinz AND, more importantly, to D-64’s taxpayers.

Then, if Heinz disagreed with the fairness of that offer, she could say so – equally publicly – and make her counteroffer, also publicly.  That way, the whole process could have played out in full public view, so that the taxpayers could have judged for themselves whether the Board’s initial offer was fair, whether Heinz’s counter (if any) was reasonable, and whether the final deal was fiscally responsible.  More importantly, the taxpayers could have judged for themselves whether their Board was being wise or foolish, and whether Heinz was being reasonable or greedy.

But Heyde and his anti-transparency ilk fear that kind of scrutiny and accountability.  They want secrecy and plausible deniability at every turn.  As we noted in our 08.29.13 post, they wouldn’t even consider televising or videotaping meetings until a group of citizens showed up with a video camera and started doing their own taping.

Given that employee compensation, pensions and benefits make up the overwhelming majority of D-64’s ever increasing operating expenses – now over $70 million/year – the need for complete transparency in every aspect of the compensation process, including union contract negotiations, has become more crucial than ever before.  That’s one of the reasons some states (like Florida) have enacted “sunshine” laws that REQUIRE such negotiations to be held in open session.

Complete transparency becomes even more crucial when we keep on electing D-64 Board members who are little more than rubber-stamping stooges for the teachers union and its collaborating administrators – most of whom are former teachers who realize that every teacher pay increase almost always results in commensurate (or better) administrator pay increases.

But the D-64 Board is nothing if not consistent in its never-ending quest to keep the taxpayers in the dark.

Last night it held a special meeting to “Approve Compensation Package for Superintendent designate Dr. Laurie Heinz,” as can be seen from the agenda for that meeting.  Not only were there no details of her “Compensation Package” or contract in the agenda itself, but as late as 8:30 this morning – the day after the meeting to approve her contract – the District had still not posted that contract or its terms on its website as the “Exhibit A” referenced at Appendix 2 to the agenda.

Chalk that up as just another sick joke played on D-64 taxpayers, and another bucket of disrespect thrown on those same taxpayers, by the folks entrusted to look out for our interests and the interests of one of our community’s most valuable assets.  In other words, it’s still business as usual at D-64.

And the taxpayers can either like it or lump it.

To read or post comments, click on title.

From time to time we write about how various units of local government botch the “small things,” and how that should give all of us pause about how they are handling the big things.

So the moment we read the words “arbitrary student fees” in the headline of a recent Park Ridge Herald-Advocate article (“District 64 officials debate ‘arbitrary’ student fees” Jan. 17), we were pretty sure that that what would follow wasn’t going to be delightful.

That highly-informative, well-written article – by reporter Natasha Wasinski, who has done some of the most solid reporting on local government we’ve seen around these parts in at least 20 years, and who shines again with this article – shines a spotlight on the way per-student fees are charged by Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64.  And that article didn’t even mention all those fees which D-64 apparently doesn’t even bother to collect, which we wrote about in our 11.18.13 post.

How screwed up is the situation with these “arbitrary student fees”?  Let’s start with the explanation of those fees by D-64 Business Manager Rebecca Allard:

“It is an arbitrary number that has been determined by what is acceptable” to each community.

Not only is it “arbitrary” but, from the sound of things, it seems pretty clear that nobody at D-64 has even attempted to ascertain the actual costs of books, supplies, technology and activities considered tangential to an education program, and then to charge fees that cover the costs of those items.  Confronted by such a basic disconnect in how a market economy works on such a small scale, we have to wonder once again just how our highly-paid administrators and our unpaid School Board members deal with all the other parts of the District’s $73 million/year operations.

We are left to wonder about that because, frankly, the various explanations given by D-64 personnel – as reported in that H-A article – fall between unintelligible and stupid-bordering-on-demented.

Let’s give Business Manager Allard another crack at it:

“I don’t know of too many districts that actually tie their [fee] revenues to the expenses and expect that number to be equal.”  Chalk that up to the tried and true “nobody else does it, so why should we” defense of arbitrary bureaucratic decision-making.

Becky!  Sweetheart!  We’re talking basic math here.  You know, addition and subtraction.  How tough can it be to add up the costs of what each kid is using and charge the parents that amount?

According to the H-A article, REALLY tough.  Allard describes it as a “very-labor intensive” process, presumably because she claims she’s “never seen a list from the school code and/or the State Board of Education that says you can charge this but you can’t charge that.”

We’ve tended to subscribe to Mark Twain’s description of the school board, at both its state and local levels.  But even with that bias, we’d like to think that the reason the State Board hasn’t provided such a list is because it expected highly-paid bureaucrats like Allard to be able to figure out that if you pay $1 for a package of pencils, you charge the student’s parents that same $1.

Or is it that Allard and D-64 just don’t want to charge the actual cost of those expenses?

According to the H-A article, citing data compiled by the D-64 Community Finance Committee (the “CFC”), last year D-64 charged the highest fees out of 23 local districts, including Wilmette, Winnetka and Glencoe.

Roosevelt School parent-activist Kathy Ranalli, a CFC member who also reportedly works for Niles Elementary School District 71, is quoted in the H-A article as complaining about these fees thusly: “I feel like if you’re going to ask me for all this money, then show me that you’re doing everything in your power to save and use my money wisely.”

Those words should be a mantra for ALL taxpayers of EVERY local governmental body, including those who are paying a whole lot more in taxes and fees for their various local governments than D-64’s mandatory $84 kindergarten fee, its mandatory $227 elementary school fee, and the mandatory $315 middle school fee about which Ranalli beefs.  Given that parents of D-64 children are getting “free” educations worth around $13,000 a year per child, those mandatory fees sound like a bargain – unless, of course, you’re one of those people for whom anything identifiable as “government”-related is synonymous with “free.”

Or, at the very least, heavily subsidized by other people’s money (“OPM”).

Interestingly enough, according to the H-A article Ranalli’s CFC last year proposed a reduction in those fees.  But that reduction wasn’t intended to correspond to the actual costs of the products and services being provided.  All the CFC wanted to do was simply chop those fees to make them more comparable to the fees charged by other districts, irrespective of the actual costs!

Brilliant.  Replacing one set of fantasy fees with another set of fantasy fees.

But it gets even better!

According to the H-A article, the most D-64 could collect in fees – based on the current fee structure – is $974,502, yet the District’s expenditures related to those fees are $1.7 million.   So D-64 is slamming the taxpayers for an extra $800,000 or so, rather than charging the parents of the kids using the goods and services their actual fully-loaded costs.

And we just have to remind you: Ms. Ranalli’s CFC wanted to cut those fees so that the taxpayers would get hammered even more.  And those CFC folks are the people the D-64 Board is relying on for the Board’s understanding of, and planning for, the District’s financial matters!

Can you say: “Inmates are running the asylum”?  We knew you could.

But let’s not forget about Business Manager Allard.  What does she have to say about this kind of deficit spending?

“I don’t know of too many districts that actually tie their [fee] revenues to the expenses and expect the number to be equal.”

No, because it’s just so darn easy to keep bilking the taxpayers while those elected school board members in all those various districts who have sworn an oath to look out for the taxpayers’ interests just blindly shuffle along to the sound of the clanging bell, into those green pastures where they can peacefully chew their $70 million-plus (and rising, every year) cuds.

And “Moo-ooooo” whenever the administrators – those highly-paid “professional” educators and finance people – tell them to.

To read or post comments, click on title.

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.

To read or post comments click on title.

Four years ago the Board of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, led by president John Heyde and his merry band of Pat Fioretto, Russ Gentile, Sharon Lawson, Ted Smart, Genie Taddeo and Eric Uhlig, played coy and secretive with D-64 taxpayers when hiring soon-departing superintendent Philip Bender out of the Hoosier State.

We wrote about that secretive process in our 04.07.10 post, “Arrogant And  Disrespectful, Or Simply Petty And Juvenile?” in which we embedded Heyde’s “invitation” to meet the then-unidentified “preferred candidate” – but only after he had become the “preferred candidate”; i.e., the proverbial “done deal.”

But last week D-64 released a message from current D-64 Board president Tony Borrelli about the search for Bender’s replacement, and the differences in content, attitude and style between his message and Heyde’s are noteworthy, even if not all that substantial.

Heyde spent one sentence describing the “Leadership Profile our community developed in December,” while Borrelli devoted a full paragraph to it – identifying the consultant (BWP & Associates) who compiled the community data for that Profile from “almost 1,000 voices” and pointing out that the Profile is accessible on the D-64 website, which it is.

While Heyde made the “preferred candidate” available to the community for a whopping one hour meet-and-greet that was announced a mere three days before it was to be held, Borrelli is bringing in the two finalists and announcing, weeks in advance, what sounds like more than one meet-the-finalists session.  Hopefully those dates and times will be posted sooner rather than later so that the largest number of residents can make themselves available for the events.

Has Borrelli and the current Board come up with the optimal process for hiring a new superintendent?

No.

But the journey from D-64’s Star Chamber-like proceedings to full transparency takes time – along with a majority of transparency-minded Board members who are willing to tell secrecy-loving bureaucrats to shape up or ship out.  By our count, Borrelli needs at least two more kindred spirits to secure a majority on that Board, but that can’t occur any sooner than the next school board election in April 2015.

Under Borrelli’s leadership, however, the Board has taken another step in the right direction, although not without a few bedeviling mis-steps along the way – the biggest of which appears to be the “Leadership Profile” produced by the cockamamie survey BWP came up with, allegedly to provide itself and the Board with insight into the community’s views on educational matters and issues.

We’re not sure from where Borrelli got those “1,000 voices,” but this Leadership Profile appears to include only 777 “voices.”  And, because of the anonymity and the survey’s susceptibility to multiple takings by the same individuals, those 777 “voices” might well be only 111 people speaking 7 times each.

Throw in the goofiness of some of the survey choices (e.g., among the “important characteristics you would like a superintendent to exhibit” are “Sense of humor” and “Peacemaker”)  and you’ve got something we described as basically worthless when writing about it in our 10.31.13 post.  After viewing the results, we are not inclined to modify that description.

What should the taxpayers make, if anything, from the results of Question 3, where the most “voices” identified the District’s top three “strengths” as: “Excellent teachers and staff,” “Reputation of district” and “Available resources”?  Or from the identification of “Facilities,” “Financial management” and “Culture in district” (whatever THAT means) among the least of its “strengths”?

Are “Interpersonal skills” (whatever THOSE are, in this context) really more important for a superintendent than “Managerial skills” or “Organizational skills,” as the answers to Question 4 would indicate?  Or than “Financial skills” – especially when “Financial management” is one of the biggest weakenesses identified in Question 3?

As we predicted, the questions asked by that survey make the resulting Leadership Profile highly subjective, easily manipulable, and pretty much GIGO, which should have been obvious to the Board from the start.  That should be an embarrassment to Borrelli and the Board.  But at least it’s published for the taxpayers to see, and that’s yet another small step for transparency and accountability under Borrelli’s leadership that was missing on Heyde’s watch, and on the watch of Heyde’s predecessors.

Whether it means that D-64 will be able to hire a new superintendent who can produce better objectively-measurable results – yes, Veronica, we mean standardized test scores – than his/her predecessors, remains to be seen.  Considering the taxes D-64 residents are already paying, however, it’s well past time our schools started achieving scores on those tests that are competitive with those from comparable communities like Elmhurst, Glenview, Northbrook, Western Springs, etc.

Otherwise, the still-high “Reputation of district” will most certainly decline further – and, with it, our property values, as prospective non-resident home buyers look for a better ROI elsewhere.

UPDATE (12.28.13)  Just when we see things moving in the right direction re the hiring of a new superintendent under School Board president Tony Borrelli, D-64 announces that: (a) each of the two finalists will be available for a public meet-and-greet on separate days, rather than together; and (b) each of them will be available for a total of only one hour – but only in half-hour increments, from 10:30-11:00 a.m. at Emerson and from 5:30-6:00 p.m. at Lincoln.

Maybe there’s some rhyme or reason behind that kind of scheduling, but we can’t really see any.  If this occurred under the Heyde administration, we’d be firing up the barbecue.  And so, in the interest of fairness, we’re lighting up the cowboy charcoal in the Weber for the Borrelli administration on this one.

A half-hour session for a community meet-and-greet?  Seriously?

Not having both finalists at the same session, so that the public could catch them both on one visit rather than two?  Seriously?

The latest session ending at 6:00 p.m., when many people who work outside Park Ridge aren’t even back in town?  Seriously?

We’re not sure whether this qualifies as a sham, a charade, or simply flipping the ol’ bird to the taxpayers of this community who soon will be paying one of these two finalists a good chunk of change, and entrusting him/her with the education of their children.  But we sure expected better.

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We here at PublicWatchdog are committed to public education.  In fact, that’s the principal reason we barbecue the local school boards, administrations and teachers when it looks like our children aren’t getting the quality of education they deserve – and the taxpayers aren’t getting the quality of education they’re paying for.

But today we’re going to take a slightly different tack and turn up the heat a bit on parents as well as the school board and the administrators.  Or, more specifically, on those certain parents of Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 students who reportedly are “boycotting” the District by refusing to pay the fees assessed for things like textbooks, supplies, technology and activities – according to a recent story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate by education reporter Natasha Wasinski (“District 64 parents boycotting school fees, PTA president says,” Nov. 3)

“Boycotting” actually may be a misnomer.  That term suggests the parents are keeping their kids out of, the D-64 schools.  Instead, these parents are sending their kids to school and availing themselves and their children of the textbooks and other accoutrements for which they’ve been charged an average of approximately $260 per student, but without paying for them.

In other words, these “boycotters” are really deadbeats.

Or scofflaws.  Or mooches.  Or parasites.

As reported in the H-A article, as of October 17th the fees for approximately 525 students remained unpaid, for a total of $121,037.  And D-64 is owed another $94,000 for previous years of non-payments.  That’s a total of $215,000+ that should be in D-64’s coffers but is still sitting in the pockets of parents.

In fairness to those parents, many of them claim that their refusal to pay is because the District isn’t giving them an itemized list of the specific items for which they are being charged.  That’s an eminently reasonable request.  Apparently the fee notices sent to the parents do not such provide detail, and it’s also not available on the District’s website.

C’mon, D-64!  What the heck is wrong with you?  How tough can it be to give people an itemized bill for what you’re charging them?

Whether it’s arrogance or stupidity, the idea of charging people a couple hundred bucks without providing chapter and verse of what that covers is unacceptable.  But so is letting the inmates run the asylum by allowing kids to attend school for months, or even years, after the payment of these fees was due.  D-64 may owe the parents an itemized bill, but it also owes the taxpayers diligence in collecting the fees owed.

If that involves denying attendance to the kids of the deadbeats, so be it.  And if that can’t be legally done, and each debt has to be sent to collection instead, so be that, too.

We applaud the approach of resident and parent George Korovilas who, while warning that he won’t pay the fees next year if itemization is not provided, has paid the fees for his three children this year.  Hopefully he won’t have to make good on his warning a year from now.

On the other hand, we question attitudes and comments like the one of resident and parent Max Fadin, who is quoted in the H-A story as finding it “suspicious” that somebody paying $20,000 in taxes also has to pay $1,000 in fees.

First of all, anybody who is paying $20,000 in taxes to D-64 would be paying total property taxes of around $60,000 annually.  We are unaware of even one Park Ridge residence that is taxed that high, so we have to assume that Mr. Fadin is talking about someone whose total property tax bill is $20,000 annually – meaning that about $7,000 of taxes goes to D-64.

A parent paying $1,000 in fees presumably has 4 children in D-64.  Those 4 children are getting around $52,000 worth of education a year for $8,000: $7,000 of taxes and $1,000 of fees.  So that parent is effectively picking the taxpayers’ pockets for $44,000 a year in subsidies.

Taking $44,000 in subsidies AND at the same time stiffing the District for $1,000 in fees is just plain wrong.

And calling it a “boycott” doesn’t make it anything close to right.

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Do the people running the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 schools understand that they may not be getting the job done?

Judging solely by the article in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“District 64 Responds To ISAT,” 11.06.13), the answer to that question appears to be a resounding “No!”  According to Lori Hinton, D-64’s Assistant Supt. for Student Learning, D-64’s student performance “remains strong, with a majority of students meeting or exceeding standards over the past seven years.”

Bragging about a majority of Park Ridge students “meeting or exceeding [state] standards” is like bragging about a majority of Park Ridge residents not going to bed hungry every night.  It’s damning with the faintest of praise.

Reading the Journal article might also have taxpayers feeling like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into an “Alice in Wonderland”-like world of edu-babble that makes the honest simplicity of Humpty Dumpty’s “a word…means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less” refreshingly direct.  Once we get past all the acronyms (“NCLB,” “AYP,” “PARCC,” “MAP”) that seem to serve primarily to bamboozle readers into thinking D-64 is doing great, we’re still left with the fact that not even one D-64 grammar or middle school was ranked in the Top 50 in either category.

Meanwhile, other districts, many of which compete with Park Ridge for residents, are placing one or more schools on those lists.

Hey, D-64!  Are you telling us that the schools in places like Elmhurst, Deerfield, Glenview, Northbrook, River Forest, Wilmette and Western Springs whose kids consistently outperform ours on the ISATs are educationally inferior to D-64 schools?  Are you saying that those other districts are irresponsibly “teaching to the test” rather than actually educating their kids?  Or do you just want us to believe that ISAT scores and rankings are irrelevant?

We don’t expect to hear D-64 administrators answer those questions.  They never answer questions about D-64 test scores versus those of other districts.  But the answers should be pretty obvious.

So what’s the number one way Park Ridge taxpayers can change D-64’s chronic acceptance of mediocrity and improve the quality of education it’s delivering for all the money the taxpayers are pouring into it?

Improve the quality of the D-64 School Board.

Those 7 people are the ones who are supposed to be telling all our highly-paid administrators what the taxpayers deserve for their $70 million a year, and then demanding that we get it.  And those 7 people are all that stand between our wallets and the special interests that seem to have succeeded in hi-jacking the system for their own personal benefits.

Public education has five principal constituencies, three of which are clearly “special interests.”

The first “special interest” is the parents of the students.  They generally want no expense spared to get what they believe to be the best possible education for their kids OPM (“Other People’s Money”) can buy.  For the typical D-64 student, his/her parents pay around $4,000/year in property taxes to D-64 in order to get an education worth $13,000+.  That’s a $9,000 “profit.”  And because raising the cost of that education by another $1,000 per kid adds just pennies to the tax bill of those D-64 parents, they can be counted on to vote for whatever tax increases come down the pike.

The second “special interest” is the teachers – the only self-proclaimed “professionals” we know of who not only have a captive market for their services but also receive collectively bargained-for, non-merit based wages and constitutionally-guaranteed, defined benefit pensions.  They, too, pay only pennies in extra taxes (assuming they even live in the District) for every $1,000 of extra pay or benefits they receive, which is why they, too, support increasing property taxes every chance they get without regard to student performance.

The third “special interest” are the administrators.  The vast majority of them are former teachers, only with bigger paychecks and without any further obligation to pay union dues.  But their pay raises customarily reflect the pay hike percentages received by the unionized teachers – so they have no incentive to bargain aggressively with the teachers union because they, too, trade pennies for dollars.  And their pay, like that of the teaches, is almost never tied to performance.

The only two public education constituencies that are not “special interests” are the taxpayers and the students.

The taxpayers foot virtually the entire educational bill for their community, irrespective of whether or not they have kids who use those schools.  If the taxpayers are lucky, the schools do a good enough job that the taxpayers’ property values remain stable or increase, thereby turning their tax expense into a kind of capital investment.

The kids, of course, are the intended beneficiaries of public education; and, at least in theory, the community as a whole benefits from their education.  If the education is good, they presumably will succeed and prosper.  If it isn’t, they’ll be the victims.

School Board members are elected to represent the community’s values, standards, aspirations and vision on the local schools – and to give taxpayers full and fair value for their tax dollars.  Unfortunately, Board members historically have served as rubber-stamp enablers of school administrators, who themselves have been little more than rubber stamp enablers of the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”), a/k/a the teachers union.

The result has been consistent increases in non-merit based compensation – “step” (based on nothing more than longevity) and “lane” (based on progress towards graduate degrees that may or may not have any value in producing better teachers) – with no commensurate increases in student academic achievement.  That’s because “step” and “lane” increases provide no real incentives for actual teacher or administrator achievement.

Performance-based incentives, however, are not something the PREA or its puppet administrators endorse.  And that one of the main reasons our School Board members should be demanding them, not just for the taxpayers but for the students whose futures often depend on the quality of the education they receive.

This isn’t meant as an “attack” on parents, teachers or administrators.  But it is an attempt to inject a much-needed reality check into the public perception of our educational system that has been consciously and even brazenly manipulated by public relations specialists bought and paid for by the “educational establishment”: the teachers unions, the Illinois Association of School Administrators,  the Illinois Association of School Boards, etc.

That’s why we need D-64 Board members who are smart enough not to get bamboozled by the sophistry and edu-babble that the “professional educators” and their advocates regularly spout, especially when they are challenged with common sense questions.  And we need Board members tough enough not to be intimidated whenever those “special interests” – the parents and the PREA members – show up at meetings en masse, the latter usually when their new contract is being discussed and voted on.

We’ve previously praised Board president Tony Borrelli for finally bringing some common sense and backbone to the Board.  In just two years he has shown more concern for the taxpayers and for the students than every one of his predecessors over the past 20 years.  We need more Board members like him.  And we still hold out hope that Dathan Paterno will turn into the candidate we endorsed in our 04.03.13 post.

The rest of the Board?  A bunch of pleasant, arguably well-intentioned bobble-heads whose next tough question to a D-64 administrator will be their first.

When was the last time you heard any D-64 Board member tell this or any previous superintendent, on the record in a public meeting, that the academic performance of our schools is not acceptable?  When was the last time you heard a D-64 Board member tell the superintendent, on the record in a public meeting: “I want at least 1 of our 7 schools to be ranked in next year’s Top 50 for achievement, and at least 1 more in the Top 100”?  Or even: “Next year I want an overall 5% improvement in our students’ test score performance”?

We scoured the Internet and Googled ourselves silly without finding even a hint that such comments or demands have ever been made.  Truth be told, Board members haven’t held administrators and teachers accountable because WE, the taxpayers, haven’t held those Board members accountable.

We, the taxpayers, too readily accept the same teacher/administrator propaganda our School Board members accept, such as that D-64 students “continue to earn competitive scores on standardized assessments and demonstrate exceptional achievement in all curricular areas through our Educational Ends framework” (per Lori Hinton) – without pointedly inquiring: “Competitive scores” compared to whom?  “Exceptional achievement” as measured by what standard?

As a result, we keep getting the same old, same old…year after year after year.  The only changes tend to be the occasional new face in the superintendent’s or some other administrator’s chair, and a new program or initiative that promises major improvements until it proves to be as ineffective as the last one.  And the continuing increases in the property taxes that pay for it.

At least Cub fans can delude themselves with the 100-year old slogan: “Wait ‘til next year.”

D-64 doesn’t even have that.

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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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We confess to being a bit bewildered, and dismayed, to read in last week’s Park Ridge Journal that the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 board has hired BWP & Associates to conduct a “nationwide” search to replace Supt. Philip Bender. (“D64 Plans National Search,” Oct. 23)

Bender is moving on at the end of the current school year after four years as superintendent.  During that time there appears to have been little in the way of educational achievement to distinguish his tenure, or that of the School Board members who engineered his hiring – a semi-secret, arrogant and petty process orchestrated by then-president John Heyde, which we wrote about in our 04.07.10 post.

We can’t imagine similar nonsense occurring this time around, especially under the leadership of new school board president Tony Borrelli.  But Borrelli wasn’t even on the D-64 board back then, so he may not be aware of the problems with that previous hiring process; and he might be a tad too trusting of the folks who may have suggested the “nationwide” search process.

The threshold question that needs to be asked and answered is a simple one: What are we expecting to get from a nationwide search that we can’t get from one of our current D-64 administrators?

Yes, we see the irony of this blog asking that question, given our past criticisms of the lack of measurable performance produced by the D-64 teachers and administrators.  But for those who think our criticism has been off-base, the question becomes: Is D-64 so bereft of home-grown managerial and leadership talent among its current administrators that the Board thinks it necessary, or even desirable, to conduct a “nationwide” search?

The term “nationwide search” might sound impressive, but what is the practical value of such an effort?  But unless the District’s well-paid headhunters are looking to bring in a well-recognized education authority – like a Michelle “StudentsFirst” Rhee from California, or an E.D. “CoreKnowledge” Hirsch, Jr. from the Univ. of Virginia – to really shake things up academically, culturally and/or financially (and we haven’t heard even a whisper of that being considered), what’s the point of recruiting candidates from around the country?

Does anybody reasonably believe that so much innovation and proven success in elementary school education is being implemented generally in other parts of the country that D-64 would significantly ratchet up its educational quality and achievement simply by importing any random administrator from another state?  What does that say about D-64’s “farm system” for training, developing and promoting administrators?

Four years ago D-64 imported Bender from Indiana, and he didn’t move the academic performance needle one bit.  Nor did he do much for D-64’s finances.  And back in 1995, the District imported Fred Schroeder all the way from Schaumburg.  He didn’t move the academic performance needle much, either – although he did sell D-64 taxpayers on the 1997 “Yes/Yes” referendum for the brand new Emerson Middle School to replace what, at that time, was the District’s newest school: the “old” Emerson Junior High.

That sent D-64 into a downward financial spiral that almost put the District’s finances under the control of the Illinois State Board of Education, a situation that was avoided only by an emergency back-door issuance of $5 million of “working cash” bonds in 2005, and the multi-million dollar tax increase via the “Citizens For Strong Schools” referendum in 2007 – with plans for another one in 2017.

And for what it’s worth, the City’s importing of its previous city manager from Michigan didn’t turn out to be a successful four-year experiment, either.

Home-grown Sally Pryor filled the gap between Schroeder and Bender.  And while some people had their issues with her, we didn’t notice any appreciable difference from her predecessor or her successor, performance-wise.  At the very least, Pryor had greater familiarity with the District and the community, which probably was an un-measureable plus.

So rather than trying to entice some nobody school administrator from Tucson or Toledo to relocate to Park Ridge, why shouldn’t D-64’s first step be to seriously evaluate the administrators already on its own payroll – people who already know the District, the community and the culture and do not need a year or two of ramp-up time?

And if those senior administrators aren’t worthy of such first-line consideration, maybe they aren’t progressing well enough to retain their current positions, either.

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UPDATE (11.01.13)  Dr. Paterno raises a number of good points in his comment to this post, and we take him at his word that he and his fellow D-64 Board members truly want “the best candidate for the job.”

We also understand that he is correct when he states that there currently are “less than a handful of D64 administrators who have the credentials or certification to become a superintendent,” as it appears that specific certifications are required by the state for those who will fill superintendent positions.  But we will take Dr. P at his word that any D-64 administrators who apply for the position will be given a fair shake – albeit with the knowledge that none of them likely will be able to demonstrate “a proven track record” of appreciably improving student performance either district-wide or in their own schools, given D-64’s unspectacular performance on standardized testing over the past several years.

That being said, you can contribute to the new superintendent hiring process by going to the D-64 website between now and November 4 and taking the survey of priorities for the new superintendent established by the District’s hired headhunter firm, BWP & Associates. Just go to the D-64 home page (http://www.d64.org/), go to the “News & Announcements” block on the right-hand side of the page, click on “District 64 Board of Education Invites Input on Superintendent Search…” and have at it.

Frankly, we put virtually no stock in “anonymous” surveys of this type because they usually are designed either to yield a specific intended outcome, or to produce random results that can be interpreted in any way the surveyor (and the entity commissioning it) desires.  And it appears that this one can be taken multiple times, so ballot-box stuffing is to be expected, especially by the special interests like the teachers and administrators who have the most immediate interest (i.e., their jobs) in this decision.

Since this is the way the School Board’s headhunter wants to go, we have to face the fact that it’s the only game in town – and it’s better to be a player, no matter how rigged the game might be, than to sit on the bench.  But since it’s an anonymous survey that permits multiple voting, we’re suggesting that you “cheat” a bit when taking it – because we suspect that the PREA will be telling its members (perhaps overtly, but more likely with typical Chicago-style winks and nods) not to check the “I am employed by Park Ridge – Niles School District 64” box or the “School Teacher” box but, instead, to identify themselves as merely a resident (and maybe also a parent or retired person) when checking off “Strengths” such as “Excellent teachers and staff,” “Financial management” and “Academic achievement”; and issues such as “Funding,” “Instruction” and “Personnel.”

All you ordinary taxpayers should identify yourselves as employees, teachers, administrators and/or, at the very least, parents of current D-64 students – if only to neutralize the anticipated camouflage the PREA members are likely to be wearing.  And take the survey as many times as you can, since that’s another acceptable way to play a rigged game.

Then contact each D-64 Board member and demand that the District post not just the compilation of the results of the survey but also its raw data – including all of the individual surveys – online in real time, so that those results can be assessed by the taxpayers in their original, unadulterated state rather than after being sanitized by the District and/or its headhunter.

Because as a long line of t.v. and movie Westerns have taught us, when facing a rigged poker game you either hold a gun to the dealer’s head to ensure an honest shuffle, or you kick over the table.

A number of things have happened over at Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 since we last wrote about it on July 22.

There has been a brief dust-up over whether lunchroom and after-school monitors (a/k/a glorified babysitters) would have their pay cut from $12/hour to $10/hour.  We question why those “jobs” shouldn’t be performed by Park Ridge’s many “volunteers,” given that from what we can tell most of the folks doing the monitoring are stay-at-home parents and retirees who appear to have a few spare hours to donate to the community.  But that’s a topic for another time, assuming this brief mention doesn’t provoke a spate of indignation by those monitors who feel the need to defend their compensation.

There was a school board and staff “retreat,” which we hear may have been the most productive such exercise in decades.  As best as we can tell, that’s one of the first accomplishments under new Board president Tony Borrelli, and we hope to address that – and other initiatives Borrelli reportedly is pushing – in greater detail in a future post.

We probably won’t be addressing a future post to the announcement that Supt. Philip Bender won’t be back next school year.   That’s because we can probably say all we need to say about Bender’s short tenure by noting that expenses continued to increase but measurable student performance did not.  In other words, D-64 taxpayers have continued to pay – handsomely – for non-performance at a Bender-led D-64.

But what does get our attention and deserve some discussion today are the recent reports of D-64’s $3 million deficit, which now is being projected at a much lower $1.7 million.  Believe it or not, that’s good news for a couple of reasons – and, no, we’re not going soft on deficits.

As D-64 is telling it, that entire $1.7 million deficit represents capital expenditures; i.e., money used to purchase long-term capital assets like a new heating plant and air conditioning for Carpenter School, more efficient boilers at Lincoln Middle School and Franklin School, and air conditioning at Franklin and Field Schools – systems that should serve the District’s students for a decade or two, at least.  D-64 Business Mgr. Becky Allard is claiming that, excluding the capital projects and debt service payments, the District’s operating fund would actually be showing a $3.1 million surplus.

We’re going to have to look at that claim a bit more closely before we endorse it, but for now we’ll take it at face value – while pointing out that one explanation for such a surplus is the ever-increasing number of property tax dollars the District keeps gobbling up.  What we really hope to see – and what we hope Board president Borrelli demands – is a full-blown public debate over whether these long-term capital improvements should be funded out of operating cash, as D-64 has been trying to do recently, or be the subject of long-term debt; i.e., bonds.

Such a debate would be a big improvement over the quasi-secret discussions that were often held, primarily in closed session, by previous school boards, followed by quick and unexplained votes as soon as those boards emerged from closed session.  That’s how the District issued the $5 million of non-referendum “working cash bonds” back in 2005 to fend off the likely takeover of its finances by the Illinois State Board of Education after several years of “early warning” and “watch list” citations by the ISBE.

Back then D-64 was using financial gimmicks and obfuscation to conceal the true economic consequences of the $20 million-plus of bonded debt for the questionable 1997 “Yes/Yes” new-Emerson referendum – the focal point of which was demolishing and replacing the District’s then-newest school – so that the D-64 board could continue to raise teacher and administrator salaries beyond what the taxpayers likely would have tolerated had all the economic facts been disclosed in full and understandable fashion.

We’ll reiterate something most regular readers of this blog already know: we’re no fans of public debt, in large part because it is usually undertaken by feckless, pandering public officials – and feckless, incompetent bureaucrats – who figure out, early on, that spending OPM not only can be fun but that it also can make the special-interest recipients happy.  And happy special interests make good campaign contributors and less-critical residents.

But when used wisely for long-term capital assets and not allowed to simply enable more irresponsible discretionary spending, bonded public debt can serve a very fair and legitimate purpose: spreading the cost of valuable long-term community assets to the expected beneficiaries – including taxpayers who will become residents (and beneficiaries) in future years.

What appears to be a Borrelli-driven emphasis on strategic thinking and decision-making has already caused D-64 to make a commitment to managing its finances so as not to seek another operating expense referendum until at least 2021 – a four-year increase over the 2017 target set by the proponents of the 2007 tax increase needed to keep the State Board of Education away from D-64’s door.  With the District already able to raise taxes at the rate of inflation, however, we question the logic behind even a 2021 referendum.

Realistically, living up to that 2021 plan will take far more discipline and fiscal responsibility than D-64 has ever demonstrated – no matter how many of the $20-50 million of capital projects the District’s architect of record already has identified are undertaken, and how much debt service is added to future D-64 budgets.

And you can bet the ranch that the PREA and the District’s highly-paid administrators won’t look kindly on anything that threatens to interfere with, or limit, their future salary and benefit demands.  They may want nicer and better schools in which to work, but they aren’t about to sacrifice increases in their compensation for them.

Just like they haven’t been willing to forego pay raises in the face of stagnant student performance.

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