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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