From time to time we write about how various units of local government botch the “small things,” and how that should give all of us pause about how they are handling the big things.

So the moment we read the words “arbitrary student fees” in the headline of a recent Park Ridge Herald-Advocate article (“District 64 officials debate ‘arbitrary’ student fees” Jan. 17), we were pretty sure that that what would follow wasn’t going to be delightful.

That highly-informative, well-written article – by reporter Natasha Wasinski, who has done some of the most solid reporting on local government we’ve seen around these parts in at least 20 years, and who shines again with this article – shines a spotlight on the way per-student fees are charged by Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64.  And that article didn’t even mention all those fees which D-64 apparently doesn’t even bother to collect, which we wrote about in our 11.18.13 post.

How screwed up is the situation with these “arbitrary student fees”?  Let’s start with the explanation of those fees by D-64 Business Manager Rebecca Allard:

“It is an arbitrary number that has been determined by what is acceptable” to each community.

Not only is it “arbitrary” but, from the sound of things, it seems pretty clear that nobody at D-64 has even attempted to ascertain the actual costs of books, supplies, technology and activities considered tangential to an education program, and then to charge fees that cover the costs of those items.  Confronted by such a basic disconnect in how a market economy works on such a small scale, we have to wonder once again just how our highly-paid administrators and our unpaid School Board members deal with all the other parts of the District’s $73 million/year operations.

We are left to wonder about that because, frankly, the various explanations given by D-64 personnel – as reported in that H-A article – fall between unintelligible and stupid-bordering-on-demented.

Let’s give Business Manager Allard another crack at it:

“I don’t know of too many districts that actually tie their [fee] revenues to the expenses and expect that number to be equal.”  Chalk that up to the tried and true “nobody else does it, so why should we” defense of arbitrary bureaucratic decision-making.

Becky!  Sweetheart!  We’re talking basic math here.  You know, addition and subtraction.  How tough can it be to add up the costs of what each kid is using and charge the parents that amount?

According to the H-A article, REALLY tough.  Allard describes it as a “very-labor intensive” process, presumably because she claims she’s “never seen a list from the school code and/or the State Board of Education that says you can charge this but you can’t charge that.”

We’ve tended to subscribe to Mark Twain’s description of the school board, at both its state and local levels.  But even with that bias, we’d like to think that the reason the State Board hasn’t provided such a list is because it expected highly-paid bureaucrats like Allard to be able to figure out that if you pay $1 for a package of pencils, you charge the student’s parents that same $1.

Or is it that Allard and D-64 just don’t want to charge the actual cost of those expenses?

According to the H-A article, citing data compiled by the D-64 Community Finance Committee (the “CFC”), last year D-64 charged the highest fees out of 23 local districts, including Wilmette, Winnetka and Glencoe.

Roosevelt School parent-activist Kathy Ranalli, a CFC member who also reportedly works for Niles Elementary School District 71, is quoted in the H-A article as complaining about these fees thusly: “I feel like if you’re going to ask me for all this money, then show me that you’re doing everything in your power to save and use my money wisely.”

Those words should be a mantra for ALL taxpayers of EVERY local governmental body, including those who are paying a whole lot more in taxes and fees for their various local governments than D-64’s mandatory $84 kindergarten fee, its mandatory $227 elementary school fee, and the mandatory $315 middle school fee about which Ranalli beefs.  Given that parents of D-64 children are getting “free” educations worth around $13,000 a year per child, those mandatory fees sound like a bargain – unless, of course, you’re one of those people for whom anything identifiable as “government”-related is synonymous with “free.”

Or, at the very least, heavily subsidized by other people’s money (“OPM”).

Interestingly enough, according to the H-A article Ranalli’s CFC last year proposed a reduction in those fees.  But that reduction wasn’t intended to correspond to the actual costs of the products and services being provided.  All the CFC wanted to do was simply chop those fees to make them more comparable to the fees charged by other districts, irrespective of the actual costs!

Brilliant.  Replacing one set of fantasy fees with another set of fantasy fees.

But it gets even better!

According to the H-A article, the most D-64 could collect in fees – based on the current fee structure – is $974,502, yet the District’s expenditures related to those fees are $1.7 million.   So D-64 is slamming the taxpayers for an extra $800,000 or so, rather than charging the parents of the kids using the goods and services their actual fully-loaded costs.

And we just have to remind you: Ms. Ranalli’s CFC wanted to cut those fees so that the taxpayers would get hammered even more.  And those CFC folks are the people the D-64 Board is relying on for the Board’s understanding of, and planning for, the District’s financial matters!

Can you say: “Inmates are running the asylum”?  We knew you could.

But let’s not forget about Business Manager Allard.  What does she have to say about this kind of deficit spending?

“I don’t know of too many districts that actually tie their [fee] revenues to the expenses and expect the number to be equal.”

No, because it’s just so darn easy to keep bilking the taxpayers while those elected school board members in all those various districts who have sworn an oath to look out for the taxpayers’ interests just blindly shuffle along to the sound of the clanging bell, into those green pastures where they can peacefully chew their $70 million-plus (and rising, every year) cuds.

And “Moo-ooooo” whenever the administrators – those highly-paid “professional” educators and finance people – tell them to.

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