If you believe the propaganda Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Supt. Laurie Heinz, Chief School Business official Luann Kolstad, and a majority of the Tony Borrelli-led D-64 Board has been spouting about the state of “security” at the District’s eight school buildings, the under-secured entrances to each of those schools currently put every schoolchild at risk of being injured or killed by:

(a) an “active shooter” like Sandy Hook’s Adam Lanza;

(b) some unbalanced parent looking to settle a custody or child-support score with a Glock;

(c) a radical extremist deliveryman wearing a suicide vest; or

(d) whatever other threat a fertile imagination can conjure up.

So, what are that Board and Administration doing to address these threats that, according to them, exist right here, right now…today?

NOTHING!

If you want or need proof of such recklessness, look no further than the meeting video of last Monday (03.21.16) night’s Board meeting.

Once again, the topic was “security” – assuming you can use that term with a straight face when discussing the not-really-secured vestibules on which D-64 wants to spend $8-10 million of our tax dollars. More accurately, however, much of the meeting dealt with the seemingly bogus-and-escalating cost estimates foisted upon this gullible Board by the District’s architect of record FGM Architects (“FGM”) and construction manager Nicholas & Associates (“Nicholas”), heavily aided and abetted by Heinz and Kolstad.

In just 18 days – since March 3rd – the projected costs of those vestibules has reportedly soared a whopping $807,000 from FGM’s/Nicholas’ previous $6.9 million figure. And that $6.9 figure itself was a boxcar increase from the dynamic duo’s initial $5.1 million projection last November.

This vestibules project has gone so far off the rails, so quickly, that even a dependable rubber stamper like Board member Scott Zimmerman balked at the 66% cost escalation – claiming that “I’ve never seen a miss like that” by FGM and Nicholas, before calling what they produced a “half-baked pie.”

Given the funny numbers tossed about at that meeting and mentioned in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate’s account of it (“District 64 struggles to balance school security upgrades with high price tag,” March 22) – $7.1 million, $8.9 million, or $10.1 million – we’re not sure any of those numbers is remotely close to real.

Yet Heinz, Kolstad, Borrelli and a majority of the Board weren’t going to let FGM’s/Nicholas’ cost WAGuess-timates stop them from finding some way of moving this ill-conceived and profligate project forward that same night. They made that clear by the two alternative motions (A” and “B”) contained in the Board packet, as well as by numerous comments made during the discussion.

Which is why we want to send a big Watchdog bark-out to resident Joan Sandrik, who showed up to once again speak truth to power – albeit this embarrassingly low-voltage School Board and Administration.

Check out the video (starting at the 2:31:30 mark) to see and hear how Sandrik pulled no punches, opening with a head-snapping left jab of “I don’t trust the architects” followed by a right hook of “I don’t trust anything they say.”

BAM!

In response to the cost escalation of these not-very-secured vestibules, Sandrik quite reasonably asked whether the architects “have…given us a Rolls Royce when all we need is a Buick?”

Although we haven’t seen FGM’s or Nicholas’ contracts with the District, the general rule of thumb is that the more “Rolls Royce” brick-and-mortar projects the District does, the more money flows into FGM’s and Nicholas’ bank accounts. That means it’s in their economic interest – as it has been for D-64’s “security” consultant, RETA Security, Inc. – to peddle as much panic as possible. And the District’s senior administrators and Board majority have been all over that panic-peddling like cats in heat, desperate for some catnip.

$8-$10 million worth of catnip.

Listen to Heinz’s five-minute aluminum siding pitch (starting at 22:40 of the meeting video) in which she invokes the opinion of “numerous security experts” (un-named and therefore un-verifiable) before panic-peddling the “active shooter scenario” (it “could happen”) and then shifting the focus of the vestibules to a more innocuous controlled-movement purpose: restricting where people go once they get inside.

Memo to Heinz: If you don’t have metal detectors at the school entrances, you can’t prevent people from bringing in concealed firearms and ammo. Or a suicide vest filled with ball bearings and metal shrapnel.

And unless you have school personnel escorting visitors (e.g., parents, siblings, grandparents, deliverymen, repairmen, etc.) to whatever room or area of the building he/she is authorized to visit, you have no practical ability to control where that person goes – assuming they have a specific target in mind rather than the desire for random acts of carnage.

Which is why we have to also send a Watchdog bark-out to Board member Tom Sotos, who suggested (starting at 1:10:25 of the meeting video) that the District look into the comparative value of posting an armed security guard at each school entrance for the next 10 years instead of spending roughly the same $8-$10 million on these not-really-secured vestibules.

And another bark-out goes to Board member Mark Eggemann for proposing a referendum on the question of whether a majority of taxpayers casting votes on the issue would support spending multi-millions of dollars on not-really-secured vestibules. He also joined Sotos in calling out Heinz, Kolstad and Borrelli for their insistence on rushing to judgment with a decision while so many options remain under-explored:

“We came here with [options] A and B, and now we’ve got C, D, E and F,” noted Eggemann.

While that kind of reasoning couldn’t completely deter the majority of this Board from blowing taxpayer money, however, it did cause at least a temporary downsizing of the project to a “pilot program” of one school – Washington – which will get about $428,000 of “critical infrastructure” and an $840,000 not-really secured vestibule.

If you believe the Board’s and Administration’s propaganda, that leaves the other seven schools, their students and their teachers sitting ducks for shooters, bombers and various other assorted n’er-do-wells.

It also begs the question of how the District will measure the success of this “pilot” program? Perhaps with an announcement like:

“The new secured $840,000 vestibule at Washington has been every bit as successful at keeping out random active shooters and ISIS terrorists as its predecessor vestibule, so we’re declaring the pilot program a success and rolling out the vestibule program for all the schools”?

Actually, that might be about as forthcoming as D-64 historically has been about the success and failure of many/most of its “pilot” programs.

Despite his professed concern over FGM’s and Nicholas’ 66% cost underestimate, Zimmerman happily endorsed the “pilot program.” So did Board member Vickie Lee, whose predictably mindless support for almost anything and everything the D-64 administration proposes was demonstrated once again by her thinking-is-too-hard “we hired experts” two-minute monolog, starting at 1:43:35 of the meeting video.

So Borrelli and Board member Bob (“Inaction guarantees inequality”) Johnson joined Lee and Zimmerman to approve that pilot program, with Sotos and Eggemann voting “no” and Dathan Paterno MIA. That means Washington will be getting its $840,000 not-really-secured vestibule this summer.

If you’ve got about two hours to spare, and a high pain threshold, you really should try watching the whole “vestibules” segment of the meeting video to see for yourself what passes for informed and intelligent deliberation about multi-million dollar expenditures at D-64. And if your pain threshold is low, you might want to accompany the viewing with an adult beverage of choice, holding the fixings for one or two reinforcements in reserve in case additional numbing is needed.

But whether you finish the video before your beverages finish you, one thing is troublingly clear: This whole not-really-secured vestibules program appears to be, basically, a multi-million dollar fraud.

Either that, or this Board and Administration are AT THIS VERY MOMENT recklessly and callously endangering the lives and safety of thousands of children, teachers and administrators by leaving all these currently under-secured schools “as is” – without trained and armed security personnel on-site to address all the alleged threats and dangers.

You can’t have it both ways, D-64. You’re either lying about the danger, or you’re totally reckless and irresponsible in dealing with it.

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