Although he isn’t publicly admitting it, Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 Supt. Philip Bender is scared.  So are School Board president John Heyde and several other D-64 Board members.  And so is the Park Ridge Education Association, commonly known as the PREA or the teachers union.

Why?

Because last month School Board members Anthony Borrelli and Eric Uhlig did the unthinkable: they voted against the new PREA contract negotiated in secret closed sessions by Heyde and fellow Board member Pat Fioretto, as we discussed in our post “Taxpayers Just Dairy Cattle To D-64 Board, Administration (09.27.12).  Based on memory and the limited research we were able to do, those dissenting votes against the new teachers’ contract appear to have been the first of their kind in at least 20 years.

Dissenting votes scare public officials, who count on unanimity in the decision-making process to maintain the appearance of “consensus” that lulls the public into complacency and apathy.  The bureaucrats, elected officials and union folks know that the taxpayers are far less likely to question the wisdom of a unanimous vote than a vote with even one dissenter, much less two.  Conversely, taxpayers who know and respect dissenters like Borrelli and/or Uhlig are more likely to doubt the wisdom of something those two voted against.

Keeping the public in the dark is the main reason union contracts are negotiated in secret closed sessions that shield the union’s shameless demands and the District’s spineless concessions from public view and comment.  We understand that Heyde and Fioretto made sure that the secrecy requirement contained in the previous contract was included in the new contract – although we haven’t been able to confirm that yet because we can’t seem to find the actual contract posted anywhere on the District’s website. 

Just consider that more of D-64’s hide-in-plain-sight strategy, directed by D-64’s current minister of disinformation, Bernadette Tramm.

The D-64 “leadership” and PREA are so afraid of the independent thought that Borrelli’s and Uhlig’s dissenting votes represent that they took what we believe is the unprecedented step of running a “coffee and informal conversation” at District headquarters this past Thursday (10.11.12) night so that Heyde and friends could stage a dog-and-pony show on the “A-B-C’s of School Board Service” – billed by Supt. Bender as a way for anybody considering running for the Board in April “to hear first-hand about what it’s like to contribute to local public education in this significant way.”

Puh-leeze!  As if any competent person seriously considering a run for the D-64 Board doesn’t already have some idea of what they’re getting into. 

Four full-term (four-year) seats are in play on April 9, 2013 – those of current Board members Fioretto, Uhlig, Sharon Lawson and Scott Zimmerman.  Assuming Borrelli maintains his independent, pro-taxpayer stance, and should Uhlig be re-elected and do likewise, the election of only 2 more like-minded Board members would create a full-blown Nightmare on Prospect Avenue for Bender, Heyde and the PREA.

Hence, the unprecedented “coffee and informal conversation.”  Can the re-awakening of the recently dormant Brigadoon-like General Caucus of School Districts 64 and 207 be far behind?

Because neither of our D-64 “stringers” were able to attend Thursday night’s “coffee and informal conversation,” we don’t have any first-hand report on what actually transpired.  And because it wasn’t an official D-64 meeting, we doubt there will be a video of the session – even though a legitimate “A-B-C’s of School Board Service” would be the kind of informational video that a transparent D-64 could be expected to feature prominently on the District’s website… right next to that new teachers union contract, of course.

But our suspicious nature leads us to speculate that the “informal conversation” was intended to be a preliminary screening process by which Bender, Heyde, et al. could size up any prospective Board candidates in attendance to determine which of them are the kind of go-along-to-get-along folks who traditionally have occupied the big chairs at D-64 and rubber-stamped whatever the PREA and its administration allies cooked up.

In other words: not troublemakers like Tony Borrelli or Eric Uhlig.

CORRECTION (10.16.12): D-64 Board president John Heyde posted a comment earlier today that pointed out an error in this post, specifically that a similar “coffee and informal conversation” was held back in October 2010, preliminary to the 2011 election.  We thank Mr. Heyde for that correction and apologize for the error.

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