In our 07.01.15 post we wrote about the almost reflexive propensity of a majority of the current Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School Board members to run into closed sessions and hide from the taxpayers whenever they can get away with it, and especially when they are discussing how to spend more of the taxpayers’ money.

Today we’re addressing the charade by which that Board contrived a one-year contract extension and a raise for rookie superintendent Laurie Heinz.

As we did in our July 2 post, we refer you to the June 22 meeting videotape as the best evidence of how disingenuously clueless (or cluelessly disingenuous?) this Board can be. The Heinz discussion commences at the 4:01:04 mark with Board president Tony Borrelli – such a cheerleader for Heinz that we wonder where he was hiding his pom poms – announcing how he “wanted to read something” about Heinz’s performance.

That “something” turns out to be a five-minute gush about Heinz and her alleged accomplishments, all of which Borrelli claims were documented in two separate Board evaluations, one at mid-year and the other at year-end, neither of which were part of the June 22 Board meeting packet, or “Report.” Nor could we find them anywhere else on the District’s website.

According to Borrelli, there were a few wrinkles noted in Heinz’s mid-year evaluation that needed a little extra ironing. But by year-end “it was 4^th of July, the fireworks went off!”

Yes, that’s what he says on the video.

The absence of those evaluations from the meeting packets and D-64 website leads us to believe that neither Borrelli nor Heinz wanted to subject those evaluations to public scrutiny. That’s consistent with D-64’s institutionalized disrespect for the taxpayers who pay the bills for what appears to be a stagnant-to-declining operation, suggesting that whatever “fireworks” Heinz’s rookie-year performance might have set off were little more than a couple of bottle rockets and one stray Black Cat.

But that was more than enough to keep this Board “ooh”-ing and “ahh”-ing, as if watching a display of pyrotechnics engineered by the famed Grucci Family.

Borrelli insists that “[t]he entire attitude of the District has changed” thanks to Heinz, and that there has been “[s]ignificant improvement in the growth MAP scores” so that “[t]he needle, therefore, is moving” – a pointed response to a statement in our 06.22.15 post that “as best as we can tell, Heinz has failed to move the needle of student/District achievement or rankings even one click upward.”

Borrelli concludes with “[t]his District is lucky to have Dr. Heinz as our superintendent.”

We’d love to agree, really we would.  Because that would mean not only that the District’s students might be getting a better education but, also, that the District’s taxpayers might be getting more property value for the bigger and bigger property tax bucks the District keeps demanding, thanks to your unfriendly neighborhood School Board.

Unfortunately, this Borrelli-led Board is barely (if at all) any more transparent than the traditionally opaque boards of the past. Hence, not only are Heinz’s evaluations missing from the Board packets and District website, but so are those “rigorous” goals and standards that Board allegedly set for Heinz during this just-concluded school year. And we can’t seem to find the details of those reportedly rockin’ MAP scores, either.

From the sound of things, however, all those matters were discussed in the closed session at the May 11, 2015 meeting (Mark Eggemann and Tom Sotos voting against the closed session); and in the closed session at the May 18, 2015 meeting (Eggemann and Sotos voting “no”); and in the closed session at the June 1, 2015 meeting (Eggemann voting “no”); and in the closed session at the June 8, 2015 meeting (Eggemann and Sotos voting “no”). All the while, the taxpayers saw and heard nothing.

Nevertheless, at the 4:06:22 mark the rest of the Board members take over from Borrelli before voting unanimously to give Heinz a one-year contract extension worth more than $250,000. And beginning at the 4:09:12 mark (when Borrelli tries unsuccessfully to herd the Board into closed session), there’s more gushing until a 4-3 Board majority (Borrelli, Bob Johnson, Vickie Lee and Scott Zimmerman v. Eggemann, Dathan Paterno and Sotos) gives her an approximately $4,200 raise and some undisclosed but larger additional payment that will provide her with “full” health care coverage.

If you detect some schizophrenia there, join the club.

And as if the lily needed any further gilding, cheerleader Borrelli, still sans pom poms, attempts further justification of the Board’s group psychosis by noting that Heinz purportedly was hired at a “below market” rate, despite making as much in her rookie season as her vastly more experienced predecessor made in his final year; and that, even with the raise, she was still being paid “below market.”

Hey, you Board folks! If a “market” salary for Heinz is so important that Borrelli has to make special mention about it, why didn’t you leave Heinz with two years remaining on her contract and use some of that $250K-plus contract extension money to get her salary up to “market” – whatever that might be?

Oh, wait, we know that answer: that would have been the prudent thing to do!

This particular Kabuki would not be complete, however, without a few words from Heinz herself, who demonstrates her gratitude – at the 4:16:12 mark, between the extension vote and the raise vote – by insisting that, even though “the community” might expect significant improvements in student achievement and school rankings as a benchmark of her success, “[s]tudent achievement is one part of my job, it is not the sum total of a superintendent’s role.”

Yes, Ms. Heinz, student achievement is not the only measure of your success. But you darn well better realize that it’s Job One…by a mile.

Now, if only a majority of Board members could figure that out.

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