An article in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate illustrates most of what is wrong with Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, as run by School Board president Tony “Who’s the Boss?” Borrelli, his sycophantic board members, and Supt. Laurie Heinz.

The article (“Raises for District 64 superintendent, 21 administrators to go before school board,” August 16) reports that Heinz and 21 other administrators will be given raises, including “market adjustments” for those earning less than “what competitive districts pay” – “competitive districts” allegedly being what Heinz calls the “North Cook 40” (“NC40”) and claims to consist of 40 elementary and high school districts in the north/northwest suburbs of Chicago.

We say “allegedly” because the H-A article identified only Arlington Heights, Des Plaines, Kenilworth, Northbrook and Wilmette as NC40 districts.  We couldn’t find any reference to the NC40 on the D-64 website, nor could we find it through a Google search. So for all we know, the NC40 is just a figment of Heinz’s imagination.

Not surprisingly, thosse raises and “market adjustments” weren’t earned by measurably better performance either from those administrators or from the schools/students they administer. After all, this is District 64 – where they keep telling us individual performance can’t even be measured, much less rewarded.

According to the H-A article, “Boss” Borrelli justified the “market adjustments” by claiming they are “critical to keep [sic] us on par with our competitors” – without providing one iota of data about how many administrators D-64 has lost to “competitors” because of salaries over the past 5-10 years.  And that’s coming from the same guy who seems unconcerned about getting student performance and rankings “on par with our competitors.”

Board member Scott Zimmerman – who has played “Robin” to Boss Borrelli’s “Batman” every bit as eagerly as he did for John Heyde during Heyde’s “Batman” years – chipped in with the observation that tying raises to the Consumer Price Index is “fair” because, that way, “people are keeping pace with the economy.”

When The Zimmer says “people,” however, he doesn’t mean the taxpayers. He can’t be bothered to think about the many taxpayers who don’t get raises unrelated to their performance or designed to protect them from inflation. In all their years on the Board, neither Zimm nor the Boss have given a rat’s derriere about whether the taxpayers’ incomes are “fair,” or keeping pace with inflation, or leaving them able to pay the raises Heinz and finance czarina Luann Kolstad decide upon, and that the Boss and Zimm keep rubber-stamping.

The Boss’ and Zimm’s only concern is keeping D-64 employment as lucrative, unaccountable and risk-free as possible. Which is why Heinz can shamelessly get away with spouting such nonsense as: “If money were no object, the sky would be the limit in terms of what I would want to offer this group of hard-working professionals” – despite no meaningful performance results, of course.

Chalk that up to Heinz’s being able to spend Other People’s Money (“OPM”) while pawning off activity as achievement, especially her own for which she is paid substantially more than the $205,020 “base salary” which  Kolstad disingenuously slipped past a naïve reporter.

But highlighting yet more fiscal irresponsibility by D-64 management isn’t the real point of this post.

Instead we want to point out the School Board’s latest affront to transparency and accountability, as described in that H-A article. In that regard we direct your attention to the fourth paragraph of that article, which states that these raises “will first be discussed with the school board during a closed meeting” – is there any other kind that matters at D-64? – “on August 22 before a public discussion takes place.” The former clandestine event is scheduled to kick off at 6:00 p.m. with the Kabuki for public consumption starting at 7:30 p.m. after a 7:00 p.m. tour of Washington School, presumably to display the prototype of the not-really-secured vestibule that will almost certainly be added to all the other District schools in the not-too-distant future for several million dollars.

Which means the most predictable scenario is Boss Borrelli leading his lemmings out of their Star Chamber to the sound of “Hallelujahs!” for Heinz and those 21 other administrators as the prelude to the 7:30 p.m. presentment of the two resolutions first published in the Board packet for the August 8 meeting, but presumably with the blanks filled in.

That will leave any taxpayers showing up to bear witness to such folly with no practical ability to analyze the resolutions’ ink-still-wet numbers or formulate meaningful questions and complaints about them before the Board engages in that passes for “debate” and then votes to approve those resolutions. At least that’s what Monday night’s agenda is suggesting.

Ignorant and unprepared is exactly the way Borrelli and Heinz prefer their constituents, especially those constituents who might actually pose a threat to Borrelli’s and Heinz’s hegemony.

Once this administrator salary scam is signed, sealed and delivered it will be time to trot out the next scam: the brand new teachers’ contract.

Just keep an eye on the chimney of 164 South Prospect for the first sign of white smoke.

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