Over the course of our many years of writing about local government, we’ve often used the terms “stupid,” “dishonest” and “irresponsible” to describe various ideas, actions and people. To the best of our knowledge, however, we have never used all three to describe one idea, action or person.

Today we get to plow new ground.

Our jumping-off point is an article in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate titled “District 64 approves $2.2 million roof repair plan”   (March 8), which superficially addresses some of the ways D-64’s architect of record, FGM Architects, and its construction management firm, Nicholas and Associates, are planning to generate some fat fees for themselves by selling all sorts of construction projects to such a bovine School Board and Administration that the members would follow a cow with a bell around its neck.

That’s because this School Board, like its predecessors, seems to lack the thing that D-64 brags about teaching its students: critical thinking.

That lack of critical thinking is why the Board members so quickly and so unthinkingly said “Yes!” when the architects, the District’s “security” consultants – to whom everything is a security threat, just like to a hammer everything is a nail – and our local constabulary recommended $6.9 million of “secured vestibules” that really won’t protect the students, faculty and administrators from any kid, any parent, or any visitor from strolling in with one or more knives or guns under their clothing or in their backpacks.

Nor will they protect the assembled multitude from some suicide vest-wearing terrorist, if that’s your preferred bogey-man du jour.

Which is why we criticized such stupid and dishonest expenditures in our posts of 11.10.15 and 11.23.15.

But such criticism didn’t deter the herd mentality of this Board – or deter Board president Tony Borrelli from making such hollow-as-a-drum proclamations of competence and fiscal responsibility as his latest canard: “We’re doing our job by flipping over every rock and looking at every alternative.”

That’s just plain nonsense, of course, and probably dishonest to boot.

This Board and administration would need Google Maps and a GPS system just to find the rocks worth flipping. And then they wouldn’t flip them for fear that they’d find even more evidence and arguments against their stupid not-really-secured vestibule concept that, without metal detectors, won’t be able to screen for and detect guns, knives and the ball bearings that tend to be the shrapnel of choice for explosive-vest bombers.

But where the stupid and the dishonest meet up with the irresponsible is demonstrated by a quote from Board member Tom Sotos, in response to a suggestion by Board member Vickie Lee to get new bids for the highest-cost secured vestibule at Lincoln Middle School, thereby likely delaying that project beyond the completion dates for the other schools’ secured vestibules.

“I don’t want to go to bed at night and say, “I voted not to approve that one school’ and then something happens at that school.”

Seriously?

If Sotos envisions not being able to go to bed with one school out of seven not having a not-really-secured vestibule, how the heck is he sleeping even a wink RIGHT NOW – knowing that NONE of those schools currently has a truly secured vestibule?

The answer: He’s sleeping just fine, thank you, because this whole secured-vestibule brouhaha is nothing more than a charade.

For months now Sotos and the Board have been grandly wringing their hands with Kabuki-style consternation and woe, while telling anyone who will listen about how terribly vulnerable the District’s students are under the schools current security systems. Hence the unequivocal, non-negotiable, absolute “need” to spend almost $7 million on not-really-secured vestibules that won’t keep a student, parent, visitor or disgruntled employee from bringing in lethal weaponry.

That’s almost SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS for continuing non-security. And, based on the H-A article, only Board member Mark Eggemann had enough sense to propose holding off on the not-really-secured vestibules in order to “get the community more involved and get their feedback on whether they want to spend $6.9 million” on not-really-secured vestibules.

Hey, folks! There’s still plenty of time left to put a $6.9 million not-really-secured vestibules referendum question on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, however, Sotos and those same Board members and administrators seem fine and dandy with leaving the kids completely at the mercy of every fanatic and whack-job imaginable for however many more months it will take until the not-really-secured vestibules are constructed. According to the H-A story, the Board couldn’t reach a consensus on “temporary security” at the schools, whatever form that might take.

But $7 million for not-really-secured vestibules is more of a “Look, there goes Elvis!” distraction from the more problematic stagnation, if not decline, in the objectively measurable performance of the District’s students. And it also allows FGM architects and other construction-related vendors to pocket a lot more of the taxpayers’ money on brick and mortar, their forte.

The simple truth is that the threat of such catastrophic violence is no more measurably real today than it was six months ago, or six years ago; or that it will be six months or six years from now. That’s just panic peddling and fear-mongering by a variety of folks who either are shilling for one special interest or another, or who inexplicably believe their own nonsense.

If the threat were real and significant, any responsible Board members and administrators would have insisted on the posting of armed security guards at the entrance to EVERY D-64 school, where they would remain until the not-really-secured vestibules were completed.

That there aren’t proves three very important points about this D-64 Board and administration:

They are stupid. They are dishonest. And they are irresponsible.

To read or post comments, click on title.