District 135 Election and the Credibilty Gap

Since my last posting on 135, I've had an opportunity to learn quite a bit about the candidates running for school board in District 135. This election, as well as 230 and Morraine Valley are very important to our community. Look at your property tax bill; around two-thirds of what you pay goes toward education. That's whether or not you have, or ever had any children in the district.

  I personally have served with two of the candidates, Mary Bragg and Tom Cunningham and I've dealt with Ann Gentile on some issues prior to her being elected. So, in fairness, I will say that my opinion of them is based, not just on what I've heard during the campaign, but on what my experiences have been as well.

  There are four educators running. Mary Bragg is a teacher and Sandy Kulak and Mike Maratea are retired teachers. Laura Berry is a former administrator. There are varying opinions about folks from education serving on school boards. There is always some concern that they will automatically be pro-union and and pro-administration but I also think that they can bring a level of experience and expertise that most of us don't have.

  The thing is this; it's OK for a teacher or administrator, past or present, to serve on a board as long as they focus on the job they have, not the job they had. If Berry is elected, for example, she will have to accept that someone else is sitting in her former chair and respect that person's right to do her job the way she sees fit. There is nothing from what she's said or done that leads me to think she would have a problem with that. The same goes for the others; in district 135, you are a board member, not a teacher. Again, I don't see a problem there. I never had reason to believe that Mary Bragg had any bias toward staff.

  I also know that Maratea is a former union leader. That is not necessarily bad, again, as long as he realizes he represents the taxpayers of the district, not the employees. He definitely brings a valuable perspective to the table, so to speak. When I was first elected in 2003, our Business Manager was Rich Lesniak. Rich was tight fisted with the district's money and had a conservative view on how a school district should be run. I was surprised when I found out that he had been a union leader before going into administration. Again, do the job you have, not the one you had.

  I've also seen some good things in Mike Carroll, starting with him challenging Tom Cunningham's candidacy. While he had to know the deck was clearly stacked in Cunningham's favor, he made a good point and let folks know what Cunningham was up to. Carroll seems like a person who wants to do the right things for the district. Personally, I'd like to see the grown ups in charge for a change.

  In the last few days there have been some new developments in District 135. Several more people have been terminated or resigned because of an alleged incident involving a special needs student. Now, all of this has been discussed in closed session which means that we won't be privy to any of this for a long time.   The sad thing is that this board has made so many bad personnel decisions, from the Melanie Walsh fiasco to multiple superintendents and administrators, that its hard to accept that they made the right call here.

  The fearful foursome have created such a credibility gap that there need to be some new folks in charge of the district. When things happen, as they did in these past few days, taxpayers need to know that the board did right and that people weren't fired or forced out because of certain board members' personal agendas or vendettas.

  Let's face it, boards sometimes have to let people go; we did it when I served. And I realize that our board was sometimes a bit rambunctious and we were sometimes accused of being dysfunctional ( these guys set the bar so high on that level that some people look back at us and see the "the good old days"), but no one ever questioned when we had to terminate someone.

I guess you can call this an endorsement of 5 candidate and a non-endorsement of 3. All I know about Nathan Jaisingh is that he is a protege of Ann Gentile. There's no point in beating that to death, is there?

 Just remember to vote. I know this sounds cliche, but this is too important to ignore. I always had great respect and admiration for District 135, long before I even knew what a school board was. I moved here because of the schools and the fact that I was allowed to serve on this board is an honor I will always treasure. If we do our part on April 9, we can restore 135 to the position of pride it always deserved.