In our November 28 post we wrote about how Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 had finally figured out that it might be giving away hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars by not confirming that every student receiving a free D-64 education actually lived in the District.
But while it is gratifying to read that the School Board might actually be trying to finally address that problem, a recent Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story (“District 64 considers further residency requirement changes,” Dec. 19) raises new questions about D-64’s ability to be competent stewards of the taxpayers’ money that leave us scratching our heads and reminding ourselves of manager Casey Stengel’s indictment of his own New York Mets back in 1962:
“Can’t anybody here play this game?”
At the School Board’s December 15 meeting, Board member Dan Collins – the only one with the integrity and fiscal responsibility to have argued against free (i.e., at the taxpayers’ expense instead of the parents’) Chromebooks even though his household would receive two of them worth over $600 – argued for residency checks for every grade instead of just at enrollment, and again at entering third and sixth grades.
But this Board apparently is still driving under the influence of its senior – and most fiscally irresponsible – member, John Heyde. Consequently, it is continuing to look for plausible ways not to require annual residency checks for kids whose parents expect $14,000 (or $28,000, or $42,000, depending on number of kids in District schools) of free D-64 education.
Not surprisingly, Heyde is appalled that parents might have to endure what he has called the “pain in the neck” of proving their kids’ residency on an annual basis when, instead, he can simply dump any additional financial burdens of educating kids who don’t live in the District on its beleaguered taxpayers.
We suggested a no-cost way of doing the residency checks in that 11.28.14 post. But anything that won’t stiff the taxpayers or enrich public employees, preferably at the same time, is rarely (if ever) to Heyde’s liking. So with no shortage of encouragement from Heyde, the Board is having a cost-benefit analysis done, presumably one that will predict a boatload of expense for a mere bucket-full of savings. That’s usually the way these kinds of things are done.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, D-64 is looking to make it even easier for non-resident kids to get a free D-64 education.
The Board is thinking about letting kids who don’t actually live in the District – but whose families are allegedly in the process of building or renovating homes in the District – attend District schools for free for the 18 months prior to the construction/renovation being completed.
The current policy is that kids can start D-64 schools only 60 days before occupancy, although we have no idea what happens if the kid starts school and then the family doesn’t move into their new/newly-renovated home. Given the currently inept state of residency non-checks, however, we suspect the kid could be going to D-64 schools for years while living in Edison Park, Norridge, Des Plaines, etc.
But where the real mental breakdown occurs is in what passes for the thought process of the Board members when it comes to the traditional benchmark qualification for free education: the concept of “residency.” Either kids live in the District or they don’t.
What benefit to the existing District taxpayers is achieved by letting kids who don’t live in the District attend District schools FOR FREE for 18 months?
According to Board member Scott Zimmerman (Heyde’s very own “Mini-Me”), free non-resident education should be extended for at least 18 months, and even up to 24 months, before residency actually occurs.
Why?
Zimm blames the slow speed of construction in Park Ridge! And if that’s not dumb enough for you, try this one: “These people…are building homes and increasing property values in the district. I’d like to encourage that.”
There you have it, folks…further proof that Mark Twain was right when he said: “God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.”
Not content to have bungled his assigned task of making sure D-64 is producing the very best educational value for its students and its taxpayers in return for the high taxes we already pay to D-64, Zimmerman is now trying to play economist by shifting his attention to faux-stimulating the local real estate market through giving away as much as $28,000 per kid of D-64 education to NON-RESIDENTS whose parents already are committed to building/renovating a Park Ridge home!
Zimm could have lifted that bright idea right out of a scene from the movie “Dave.”
And it may have inspired fellow Board member Dathan Paterno to chime in with the equally goofy observation: “As long as they’re paying taxes on the property, they’re putting money into the system.”
By that kind of un-reasoning, should a Chicago family living in Norwood Park that owns a Park Ridge condo it rents out for $1,000/month to a senior citizen be able to send their kids to D-64 schools because they are “paying taxes on the property” and “putting money into the system”?
Chalk that up as just another sick joke on the taxpayers passing for stewarsdship from our elected representatives on the D-64 Board – one they are supposed to be voting on at their January 26 meeting, along with whether to do residency checks on the kids of homeowners more frequently than just at the time of initial enrollment.
If your sense of humor runs to the twisted and absurd, feel free to “Ha! Hah!! Hah!!!” Or, given the season, “Ho! Ho!! Ho!!!”
But if you’re a D-64 taxpayer, you’re still getting coal.
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18 comments so far
What I can gather from the paperwork required by Distrct 207, “Proof of Residency will be established within 30 calendar days;…” and District 207 requires proof of residency EACH year in the form of a tax bill showing the Homeowners Exemption and 2 utility bills. If 207 doesn’t have a problem requiring this, what is wrong with the doofuses at District 64? And, what about students at the local private schools who receive services from District 64? Where’s their proof of residency, given that the private schools have students from other districts? Too much work for District 64 to monitor? Waa, waa, waa. Time for them to earn their salaries. Bah humbug!
EDITOR’S NOTE: And a partridge in a pear tree.
Why would anybody in their right mind want to let anybody into our public schools if they don’t live here RIGHT NOW? As you have pointed out many times, D-64 loses money on every kid enrolled there, unless somebody’s property tax bill is $42,000 so that their D-64 piece is $14,000.
Letting somebody who does not live here put their kids in our schools 18 months before they move in is so stupid there has to be some kind of special-interest back story to it. This is the kind of stuff that boggles my mind and lightens my wallet, neitehr of which makes me very happy.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If it made any sense to us we wouldn’t have written this post.
PD:
Hell, you can buy a condo in the city and make a few donations and your did get’s into Walter Payton Prep, even though your primary address is clearly on the north shore, and doing that still gets you elected governor.
Still on the topic of “where is your actual residence”, how many cars do you see in PR with Florida or Michigan or Wisconsin plates? I will grant you that is not a 14K education, but a few thousand but a few thousand city stickers a year and the sales tax on those vehicles suddenly starts to add up to real money.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Chicago is a corrupt cesspool, so virtually anything it does can be presumed wrong, wasteful, stupid, and corrupt. We don’t know where you hang out, but we see darn few vehicles in P.R. with out-of-state plates. But if we had our way, anybody caught with out-of-state plates despite a P.R. principal residence would be fined $5,000, with each citation fully publicized and the ticketing officer getting $1,000 of that fine as a bounty.
I agree with 5:38, except that I see no reason for any non-resident to get free tuition. If you have signed a contract on a house in July but are not closing until the end of September and want your kid to start at a D64, pay the non-resident tuition for two months and get it rebated when you close and move in. That way, if things go wrong and the deal doesn’t close, D64 isn’t out that money and having to chase it. Or the home buyer can enroll the kid in the school where he/she resides and then transfer in. This should not be this difficult, except that it looks like the school board members care about everybody BUT the taxpayers.
The problem is that Heyde and the rest of ’em are thinking about kids as kids, not as taxable units, and they’re thinking of public education for the next generation not as a personal perk but as the fundament that benefits all taxpayers, including those Park Ridge seniors whose kids grew up when the effective income tax rate was around 65% and things we now charge for a la carte were all part of the package your taxes in Park Ridge covered. They’re living in the past. What boggles my mind is that they’re educators but can’t come up with better rationales than the “hassle” to parents? Sheesh. Can’t they hire a PR person who knows enough to tell them never to shoot from the hip with lameass replies to the press? They should do what your savvy commenter suggests and just adapt the D207 system. Done and done. Not brain surgery.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When one has no appreciation, respect or sense of responsibility for OPM and the taxpayers who provide it, Heyde and his ilk can think whatever they want because it doesn’t cost them any more to be wrong, stupid and profligate than it costs the people they disrespect.
If you could PROVE, instead of simply posit or propagandize, that “public education…benefits all taxpayers, including those Park Ridge seniors,” we wouldn’t be having this discussion – including the irrelevant assertion about “the effective income tax rate” when our public education is paid almost entirely by PROPERTY TAXES, not income taxes.
To this D-64 Board, solving even something as simple as these residency problems IS “brain surgery” – but performed in a dark room by blindfolded surgeons wearing boxing gloves while using chop sticks and plastic sporks.
If you live here you should get the free education, if you don’t you shouldn’t. This should not even be an issue except for a school board that can’t seem to handle even basic tasks but then look for other things to mess up.
Love the movie “Dave” and the clip is perfect for illustrating the stupidity of what Zimmerman is proposing. Where do these people come up with these terminally stupid ideas?
EDITOR’S NOTE: We have no idea, because when you stop to do the math it is stone-cold crazy to want to add kids to the system any sooner than absolutely necessary: