A watershed event occurred at last night’s meeting of the Board of Elementary School District 64: a handful of private citizens videotaped a D-64 Board meeting.

That’s right: resident Marshall Warren manned the camera on loan from the City of Park Ridge (donated by Mayor Dave Schmidt and, until recently, used by George Kirkland to video City Council meetings) to record the public business being done by the D-64 Board.  Amazingly, this occurred less than one month after Supt. Philip Bender, in response to a request by new Board member Anthony Borrelli, expressed deep reservations about such videotaping and even wanted a legal opinion because he was “extremely uncomfortable that someone could manipulate and edit a video.”

Who would do that, Phil?  Islamo-fascist terrorists?  America’s Funniest Home Videos?  Jerry Springer?

At that same July meeting – which we wrote about in our post “Activist Citizens Add New Dynamic To D-64 Board Meeting (07.12.11) – Board member Scott Zimmerman lamely suggested that videotaping was against Board policy, thereby displaying the fear of transparency and accountability which has plagued the D-64 Board for the past 15+ years. 

As we’ve noted many times before, no branch of local government has seemed as obsessed with secrecy as D-64, whether it involves the hiring of a new superintendent, interviewing Board appointee candidates, retaining an architect of record, finding ways to obfuscate the mediocre student performance on standardized testing, or posting Board-packet materials on-line so late that interested citizens barely have time to review them prior to the meetings.  As recently as July 30, 2011, District 64 “reaffirmed” a set of “Operating Principles” that not only are almost laughable coming from the secretive and combative D-64 administration, but that also appear to mis-state the Illinois Open Meeting Act (“IOMA”):

• Information required by statute to be discussed in closed session and so discussed will remain confidential.

Under IOMA, nothing is “required…to be discussed in closed session” or required to “remain confidential.”  But if these “Operating Principles” are referring to some statute other than IOMA, they should say so to avoid further misunderstandings about what IOMA requires and doesn’t. 

Hopefully D-64’s secrecy and misinformation took a big hit last night, thanks to Warren and his merry band that included Charlene Foss and Shelley Weiner in speaking roles, all of whom pushed D-64 into something it clearly didn’t want to do.

We haven’t yet heard when or where Warren’s video will be publicly accessible, but we assume that will be known shortly.  Kirkland and Charles Melidosian found a way to broadcast the videos of the City Council’s meetings until the City redesigned its website and began hosting them itself, followed by cable newbie WOW’s installing its own equipment in the Council chambers and commencing live broadcasting of those meetings just a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, we applaud Warren, Foss, Weiner and their associates.  With a $67 million budget teed up and ready for adoption – $10 million more than the City budgets for running the whole darn town – D-64 can certainly use as much scrutiny as the citizenry can muster.

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