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!