Since 1997, when the Park Ridge – Niles Elementary School District 64 Board bamboozled the public on its ridiculous proposal to tear down and replace the District’s newest school, no local governmental body has consistently done less with more.
For those of you without any historical memory, D-64’s then-Board members not only gave the taxpayers a foolish “new” Emerson, but followed that up with such financial mismanagement that the State Board of education was preparing to take over the District’s finances – until the District snuck through an eleventh-hour, $5 million “back-door” working-cash bond issue. That funding ploy bought the District enough time to get to its 2007 “Strong Schools” super-funding referendum that replenished its coffers and preserved its status as the highest taxing body on our property tax bills.
Meanwhile, academic performance, as measured by ISAT scores, declined even as the District’s administrators actually bragged about not “teaching to the test.” And everyone did their best to ignore the distinct possibility that the under-achieving D-64 kids feeding into Maine South began lowering that school’s performance, from among the Top 10-rated high schools in Illinois to 24th among Chicagoland public high schools, according to the 2012 Chicago Sun-Times analysis of ISAT scores.
In large part, the cause of this decline in economic value to the taxpayers and educational value to the students has been a succession of school boards packed with basically nice people who came to the Board ill-equipped to say “no” to teachers and administrators – and to the teachers’ union that controls all of them – or to hold those teachers and administrators accountable for their acts and omissions to the taxpayers who pay their ever-increasing salaries and benefits. With one notable exception, Tony Borrelli, those are the kind of people who currently populate the Board.
Fortunately, three of them are leaving, and a fourth is being challenged in his re-election bid. That means D-64 voters have an excellent opportunity to make some changes to a Board that, just a year ago, had the dubious distinction of making the District’s under-performing administrators the 4th highest-paid in the state, and its under-performing teachers the 25th highest-paid, despite having only one of its schools in the top 100, based on ISAT scores.
And, thankfully, two candidates seem intent on changing that, and they are running as a two-man ticket.
Dathan Paterno is a licensed clinical psychologist whose practice centers on children and adolescents. He has expressed a refreshing willingness to address tough issues like the cost-benefit equation for D-64’s traditional special education programs, which he correctly notes are “enormously expensive” for the relatively small number of students served. And unlike some of the other candidates, he views funding referendums not as last resorts in times of crisis but as proactive educational tools that “would afford voters/taxpayers a greater awareness of the financial woes of the district and the policies that contributed to those woes.”
Gee, fiscal responsibility and accountability…concepts heretofore foreign to the D-64 Board and administration.
His running mate, Benjamin Seib, the Vice President of Finance for Cancer Treatment Centers of America and the son of a southern Indiana math teacher, understands the need for public schools to provide measurable rather than just anecdotal value to the entire community. He already has demonstrated his ability to put his University of Chicago MBA to the service of D-64 by drafting an executive memo pointing out two notable trends in the District – a report that, on one page, displays more analytical thinking and transparency about its topics than we’ve seen from either the current Board or the District’s highly-paid administrators.
We believe Paterno and Seib will become two of the most capable and effective advocates for the taxpayers and the students to sit on the D-64 Board in recent memory. They are enthusiastically endorsed.
Terry Cameron brings some interesting attributes to his candidacy, including a strong finance and business management background. And we like his idea about regularly budgeting to address infrastructure issues before they become critical and require yet another big tax-hike referendum. Unfortunately, he seems to view the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) as a valid benchmark and driver of cost increases – including teachers’ and administrators’ compensation. That’s the same wrong-headed view that has caused teacher and administrator compensation increases to not only outpace the CPI but also to increase dramatically even as student performance stagnates.
Rick Van Roeyen is a special ed. teacher and wrestling coach for Leyden Twp. His “platform” is the typical set of warm-and-fuzzy bon mots (e.g., “My interest in serving as a District 64 school board member is to honestly forward the ideals of the citizens of this community, and maintain the highest level of service practicable to our children.” Yada, yada, yada.) that appears to be missing only the tried-and-true “I want to give back to the community.”
Vicki Lee promotes her candidacy by noting that she is a “PTO President and an involved mother of two children in Park Ridge soccer, softball, Girl Scouts, and religious education” who has “always worked well in a group environment” and “strive[s] to communicate effectively and listen to all to make positive change.” If Genie Taddeo was your kind of Board member, Lee is your cup of tea.
Finally, the chief accomplishment of incumbent Scott Zimmerman in his three years on the Board appear to be serving as a dependable “yes”-man for Board president John Heyde. Whether Zimmerman can talk while Heyde is drinking water still remains to be seen, but neither the former nor the latter have ever seen a teacher’s or administrator’s salary they couldn’t raise, or some mediocre educational performance they couldn’t spin into something superficially-but-deceptively positive. So unless you enjoy paying top-shelf taxes for second-shelf education, the simple rule when voting your D-64 ballot should be ABZ: “Anybody But Zimmerman.”
Coming Next: The Park Ridge Recreation & Park District
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