Last week the Board of Education of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 made it official: Laurie Heinz is the District’s next superintendent and will be taking the reins from Philip Bender in June.

Ms. Heinz, currently an assistant superintendent with Skokie School District 68, was the last candidate standing – through no fault of her own – when the other finalist, Evergreen Park Elementary School District 124 superintendent Robert Machak, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration after his day-long visit to D-64.  Whether he was scared away by what he saw during that visit, or whether he just had second thoughts about leaving his current position, or whether District 124 made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (with or without horse’s head), is not known.

But, frankly, that’s water under the bridge, as is the flakey hiring process that started with a terribly flawed, if not outright silly, “Leadership Profile” survey dreamed up by the high-priced consultants over at BWP & Associates, and ended with the School Board hiding in closed session meeting after closed session meeting , even as its members were bragging about this being the most transparent process ever.

Compared to the Vatican’s papal selection process, maybe.  But calling it “transparent” clearly redefines that term, even in the parallel universe of local government.

Like an untested athlete picked in the first round of the draft, Heinz reportedly got a three-year deal with a starting salary of $201,000 and a total compensation package valued at $243,010.  There has been no mention of any incentive bonuses for achievements – like making the all-administrator team, winning the Most Valuable Superintendent award, or landing even one D-64 school in the Chicagoland Top 50 rankings based on standardized test scores.

Since the “transparent” D-64 still hasn’t posted Heinz’s contract on its website – at least not where we can find it – we’ll have to rely on the District’s 01.31.14 Press Release for those details for now.

School Board president Tony Borrelli called Heinz “someone who will provide direction, find answers, give input and, most importantly, pull the various elements of our district together so that all oars are pulling together for the common goal of developing this district to be one of the highest performing districts in the state of Illinois.”

If she can do that, she will be worth every penny the D-64 taxpayers are paying her.

But we’ve heard that kind of happy heifer dust before…whenever D-64 hires another superintendent.  Or when it comes up with some new “silver bullet” scheme heralding sea-change improvement in academic performance, like when it embraced the “middle school” concept in order to manufacture the need for the new Emerson school building back in 1997.  All that produced was a mini-financial crisis 8 years later and another tax hike referendum in 2007, with no objectively-measurable improvement in educational performance or rankings.

The District’s 01.29.14 Press Release is loaded with all sorts of school-oriented public relations jargon like “work seemlessly,” “best maximize,” “collaborative groups,” “seek an endpoint,” “earmarked,” “vibrant yet controlled” and “push personal boundaries.”  While these are attributed to president Borrelli, they sound a lot more like D-64 spin-meister Bernadette Tramm’s handiwork.

For her part, Ms. Heinz is saying and doing all the right things (although terms like “continued success,” “fresh perspective” and “leveraging community and Board of Education involvement” also sound like 100% pure Tramm) and we sincerely wish her well.  If she succeeds, her success will redound to the benefit not only of the children in her charge, but also to the benefit of the D-64 taxpayers who have suffered from the upward spiraling D-64 tax burden while objectively-measurable student performance has stagnated or declined – and may be taking Maine South’s ranking down with it.

But make no mistake about it: Ms. Heinz is a mercenary.  She does not hail from Park Ridge, nor does she live and pay taxes here.  The superintendent’s position is simply a career move for her, not a long-term commitment to this community.

Her “investment” here will be limited to her time and effort – for which she will be handsomely compensated, not only while she is working but also by a guaranteed pension that could pay her an additional $3-4 million after she retires from public education.  And if things don’t work out for her at D-64 after 3 years, she can move on – almost three quarters of a million dollars richer – without any disruption to her and her family’s life.

That’s not her fault, either, but just another aspect of the absurdity that infects public employment in Illinois.

We do, however, find it odd that Ms. Heinz, a newly-minted superintendent, will apparently be paid the same as a seasoned superintendent like Bender.  Why that is the case is unclear, although we find it interesting that Board member Dan Collins, in casting the only “no” vote for Heinz’s compensation package, referred to how his fellow Board members already knew all his reasons for that vote – presumably because they heard them in all those closed sessions.

Chalk that up as another information casualty from this faux-transparent Board.

But from what we’ve seen and heard so far, we have to trust that Ms. Heinz can do the job.  Whether the Board can do its job, however, remains the real unanswered question.

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