Today we are taking a break from the financial travails of one public body (the City of Park Ridge) and looking at those of another: High School District 207.

As reported in yesterday’s on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“District 207: Teachers union rejects job-saving concessions,” March 9), the teachers union voted “no” on a School Board request that they re-open their contract in order to save some or all of the 75 teachers being laid off to help fill a $17 million budget hole.

Why doesn’t that surprise us? 

This vote confirms that simply foregoing raises – rather than actually taking wage cuts, as is happening for so many who toil in places other than the fantasyland of unionized government employment – is unthinkable to those union teachers who feel entitled to their roughly 8-month work year, their virtually guaranteed employment, and benefits that private sector workers don’t even dare dream about anymore. 

But while the hopelessly naïve among us might think the union “no” vote makes the 75 lay-offs a done deal, we’ve been around these kinds of goings-on too long to jump to that conclusion.

The first clue that it ain’t over ’til it’s over was Supt. Ken Wallace’s comments (as reported in another H-A story from March 2: “District 207: Looking for a few good financial experts”) that the District provided the union with “probably 10 different scenarios” for saving those jobs, and then iced the union’s cake even more by publicly admitting that: “We’re in no position to turn almost anything down.  If they come with some sort of offer, it’s something we’d have to consider.”

We’re sure glad he’s not part of the U.S. team negotiating nuclear non-proliferation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And even after the teacher’s union voted to figuratively kick District 207 in the you-know-what, Wallace’s response was more spineless than solid – starting with his blubbering about this being “a very difficult process for our teachers and teacher assistants” and his gratitude “that [the union] thoughtfully considered our request in the context of these difficult economic times.” 

All that was missing was “Thank you, sir; may I have another?”

One of the reasons District 207 is in its current fix is that for years its Board and Administration gave the teachers union pretty much everything it wanted.  That’s a mindset – on both sides – that won’t change very quickly, as evidenced by how the union members brazenly called the District’s bluff by appearing to throw their own under the bus.

That’s because they are confident that “the bus” will slam on its brakes just before impact.

And after years of watching wimpy school board members go belly-up for the teachers unions, that’s what we’re betting on, too.