Education
Significant education related accomplishments are highlighted in "The Issues" section. They are not repeated here. Additional ones are shown below:
Prior to Dr. Burkey joining our District, I advocated our teaching keyboarding at the lower grade levels. This is what we are now doing. In today's world it made no sense to be doing
this primarily in ninth grade. Mr. Skala fostered a keep-the-status-quo culture which was not in the best interests of our students.
I repeatedly suggested that we should provide special help after school hours to struggling ninth graders. This is now part of what's marketed as Freshman Academy.
I pointed out how summer school was not addressing the English learning needs of our ESL students.
It is now. An administrator at the public meeting commented "Why didn't we think of that?"
I emphasized to the Board the merits of having during-the-school-year-progress testing as one interim Superintendent candidate talked about.
He referenced a specific test service. We have to be willing to adopt good ideas, even when they are not invented here.
We now have MAP testing to assist teachers with our students' learning and provide feedback to parents.
I advocated we reinstate the Activity buses that Mr. Skala voted to cut. We did.
I advocated making transportation available to summer school students on a shared cost basis. We do now.
During my first year on the Board, I insisted we improve the dollar amounts budgeted for class supplies which for some programs were disgracefully low.
This was offset by insisting on better budgeting in dozens of other accounts.
During my first year on the Board, I made a motion to reinstate the Middle School activities that Mr. Skala had cut.
It took another year for me to persuade a board majority to reinstate most of the activities that were cut.
I suggested to board members that we should consider adding Chinese to our curriculum.
When Superintendent Burkey suggested it, it was accepted for the same reasons I suggested.
I insisted that we carefully and adequately provide for the education of our special needs students.
With all the money we are spending we should be having every group of students meeting applicable annual progress goals.
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Decreased Taxes
I suggested refinancing our bonds with lower interest rates. I was then asked by our Chief Financial Officer at the time to work out the
detailed alternatives with our Harris banker. I did and they were presented to the Board, which approved the details and legal resolution.
The bonds were refinanced. The savings came to about $100 in lower property taxes for a modestly assessed home.
It may not sound like much to some but it was the right thing to do for taxpayers.
The huge savings came from stopping most of the $2,000 per year tax hike that Mr. Skala scared residents into approving.
I suggested a potentially enormous tax savings on refinancing a large portion of our Capital Appreciation Bonds to our
Harris banker a few years ago. This is being looked into as the capital markets may be just right to take advantage of this opportunity.
My being on our Board will insure you have a voice on what happens to the potentially large savings. Decisions will have to be made on how
much goes back to benefit taxpayers or does the District keep all of the savings.
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Got Part Of Skala's Deceptive Tax Hike Repealed
During the public comment section of the December 2004 Board meeting, I, as a resident, and not yet elected to the Board, presented specific facts to
Mr. Skala (then Board President) on how his and the District's tax increase campaign was a factual deception. The tax increase
(on a $200,000 home) was not the $340 - $360 per year he told voters. I had documents from the County Clerk's office and tax calculations
from a C.P.A. proving his tax hike would add $2,000 more per year in taxes.
In contrast...
| Mr. Skala, at any time before the first tax increase vote, could have gotten the correct facts on what would happen to our property taxes from either the County Clerk's office or legal counsel. He led the second tax increase campaign with no attempt at due diligence. He did not tell voters about how the District would lose about 60 cents in State Aid on every dollar of new tax hike property taxes. Having been on the Board, and having seen how so many quality discussions with our legal counsel are verbal, it's farfetched to think Mr. Skala "didn't know" his second tax increase vote was for a $2,000 per year tax increase. |
I then spent months presenting facts and explanations to the media and residents to generate the needed publicity to get this enormous tax increase fixed. Rather than work with me to fix the problem Mr. Skala created, his response was to deny there was a problem and had administrators present more inaccurate public explanations. I rallied community support and outrage to the level where the media took this deception very seriously. Then, our legislators took it seriously.
After being elected to our Board, I found there was no remedy for our school district in the details of the legislation, introduced in Springfield. I worked with Representative Tryon and a tax C.P.A. to help make that happen. The District had to pay a lobbyist over $40,000 of taxpayers money to help get the law changed. Representative Tryon did a great job and acknowledged my hard work and contributions during his presentation at the Illinois School Board Conference.
I put in a tremendous amount of energy, time and effort into getting the State Law changed. There were only two board members (myself and Mr. Quagliano) with Representative Tryon in House Minority Leader Tom Cross's office, pressing opponents for the law to be fixed. When the final legislation language was negotiated with an Illinois teachers union representative, again, there were only two board members (myself and Mr. Quagliano) present with Representative Tryon.
If you ever did a tremendous amount of work on a successful project and someone else took way too much credit for doing so little, you probably understand my sentiments about Mr. Skala taking so much credit for getting the law changed. He barely showed up, essentially was on the sidelines, and expects to take center stage and get the credit. His approach, after the fact, was to make a $1,000 political campaign contribution that "coincidentally" brought him some political praise. Mr. Skala watched others do the hard, persuasive work.
In case you think the $360 tax increase was only for one year, you have to know what one year means. It means it increased in one year and stays in effect every year. It not only stays in effect in the second year and each following year, you have the "normal" tax increases compounding the size of it every year. The one year increase was based on a series of deceptions described in "The Issues" section.
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Saving Millions of Dollars
I determined the District was paying far more per copy for 8 million photocopies per year than I had to pay for 100 copies at Kinko's! The
copier lease contracts that Mr. Skala praised, I advocated we exit. We did. The administration estimated the savings from doing this to be a million dollars or more.
Mr. Skala voted for selling off our school buses, which the District then did. He said we would be able to receive more depreciation from
leasing the buses than if we owned the buses outright. He was wrong. There is no extra depreciation on the same buses. I insisted the
administration show a 10 year cost analysis of owning versus leasing. Owning was more favorable. Mr. Skala had us returning buses with an
average of 40,000 miles on them, without an option to purchase the buses after paying 5 years of lease payments. The District will be saving
a lot of money by going back to owning our buses. We also began buying some older used buses at exceptionally good prices, a practice Mr. Skala overlooked.
I compliment Superintendent Burkey for what he does well. However, when I persuaded the Board to go out to bid on the District's largest
outsourcing contract (custodial contract), completely against the administration's recommendation (to not go out to bid), and we save about $750,000,
guess what? There is no press release publicizing the total dollar savings or how I led the board to do the right thing. One board member and friend of
Mr. Skala described going out to bid after having the same vendor on a three year contract, as "gambling". It was using good professional business judgment.
That is not gambling. My being on our Board helps balance out the board members who opposed saving $750,000 because they wanted to rubber stamp a poor
administrative recommendation. We have plenty of rubber stamp board members. I bring a positive value-added to the Board that far exceeds being a rubber stamp.
As Board President Mr. Skala had the District's health insurance program switched from a self-insurance plan to an insurance company plan, without
informing the Board of the change. I insisted we return to a lower total cost self-insured plan professionally managed by an outstanding insurance broker.
The Board followed my recommendation, went out to bid and we did just that.
I represent the Board on the District's insurance committee and pay close
attention to the details of our plan and its financial cost advantages. This is an area where we can skillfully manage both our costs and risks to the
advantage of our employees and the District. It is also an area that is subject to financial manipulation unless there is balanced, careful oversight by a board member.
I have been that oversight for our Board. If we continue to properly manage this program we will have both healthy reserves set aside and
lower-than-otherwise-possible premiums in the future.
I introduced significant cost savings into language that is now in our current teachers' contract. This with the above items and those in the
Eliminate Wasteful Spending section are together saving our District millions of dollars.
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Eliminating Wasteful Spending
In the "Saving Millions of Dollars" section, I describe some of the larger contracts and leases that I got rebid and redone. Here I point to additional savings
as a result of my initiatives and proposals. In the "Progress Made Has Not Been Easy" section, I describe an unnecessary, very expensive consulting contract
that I made sure we terminated.
We were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on Wing Leader positions. If you don't know what a "Wing Leader"
is in education circles, it's because other school districts (as in none in Illinois) have them. It was a Mike Skala boondoggle way to waste at least millions
of dollars. These jobs were held by some of our most expensive (and experienced) teachers who got to do very little with very little responsibilities. The
individuals did not have administrative certificates so they could not officially evaluate teachers in their classrooms. If they did, this wasn't according to
regulation standards. They were what you would politely call "low value" positions. They were paid according to the teachers union pay schedule, but they did
not teach in any classroom or have administrator responsibilities. I did listen to how they were helpful at times moving media equipment from one part of a building
to another.
At my first on-the-board, regular board meeting I recommended we eliminate the Wing Leader positions for the following year. Mr. Skala
objected and prevented this from happening. It took me a year to convince a board majority these positions were unnecessary.
What is sad about this is Mr. Skala kept these positions while he told residents the budget was "cut to the bone". Sadder was how he cut classroom teacher
jobs while he kept Wing Leader positions in the budget. The Chesak Martin PTA was asked to use its money to buy the District copier paper, while Mr. Skala
voted year after year to approve wing leader jobs in the budget.
The fact is I did work with other board members to vote to get rid of these wing leader positions.
At my first board meeting I proposed eliminating extra media specialist positions Mr. Skala voted to hire and opposed eliminating.
Again, it took a year for me to convince a board majority to reduce the number of these positions to match our needs. Mr. Skala's argument that
you can't possibly spend too much on education, means it is acceptable for him to vote for unnecessary and
expensive jobs we don't need. My approach is insisting on spending our money wisely.
The administration brought to the Board a request to purchase and install about 95 digital bus cameras. Knowing we already had bus cameras included as part of the bus
leases and already had digital cameras installed on the buses, referencing this info., I asked why would we want to do this? The answer was "The vendor wants us to."
Everyone at the meeting roared with laughter. What had happened was a several hundred thousand dollar purchase was made without issuing a purchase order or bringing the
item to the Board for approval. Now the vendor wanted to be paid and there was a large miscommunication about whether we needed to pay anything and what the dollar amount
should be. The administrator thought the price quoted was for one payment while the vendor was insisting it was the price to be paid each year. Mr. Skala agreed to verbal
deals/purchases with top administrators, with no authorization from the Board, planning on no one finding out. My being on the Board has been an effective and
excellent check and balance.
You probably have an intuitive idea of how much money someone makes whose job it is to primarily make photocopies all day. Mr. Skala praised the contract that
gave a company over $100,000 per year to supervise two such employees who would do this work using our equipment in the central administration building. After I
pointed out how much we were overpaying and how easy it would be to have this type of individual as a District employee, Mr. Skala could have joined me in making the cost savings. Instead he opposed terminating the contract. It took about two years to get this wasteful spending eliminated. Mr. Skala acted as if he had a personal interest
in keeping a bad contract for our District.
The two elementary schools on the Square Barn Campus were new in 2005. They suffer from serious defects e.g. leaking
water and the District has had to file lawsuits. Mr. Skala did nothing to make sure someone or some company was responsible for independently performing an inspection
and making sure the two schools were built to the satisfaction and specifications of the District, BEFORE the money got paid. In the fourth year of use, both schools have
serious water/construction issues. Mr. Skala praised some of the very same companies we have had to take legal action against.
Some of the wasteful spending that went on with Mr. Skala as Board President was because of a lack of management oversight. He certainly didn't provide any.
For example, the District was being billed a higher electric rate than what it could have received. All it had to do was ask for the lower rate. Mr. Skala had
these abuses in place while he told parents the budget had been cut to the bone and he had to cut classroom teachers and raise class sizes.
The range of proposals I have made, that have been adopted, range from the large bigger picture items to the ones that are methodically saving money year
in and year out.
Sometimes I have had to prevent spending before it could take place. In 2008, the administration had in the bid specs the option of having our playing
fields cut with equipment you would use to cut putting greens. I insisted we don't need to have our football field cut better than what the Chicago Bears
play on! The Board agreed with me. The bid specs have to be watched for provisions that can be used to effectively discourage competitive bidding.
Days before school was to start in 2005, administrators wanted to hire about 11 or 12 more classroom teachers. They brought this up with little
to no advance notice. I pointed out at our Board meeting how administrators were incorrectly assuming we would have a large increase in
students during the school year. The data shows we didn't. The Board asked the administrators to caucus among themselves and come back and tell
the Board how many additional teachers they thought they really needed. They came back and said 11. I led the Board to agree on four, making sure
the class sizes were within guidelines but preventing the expensive over-hiring recommended by administrators. I, and other board members, had to
carefully sort out what the real facts were "live" during the board meeting. Mr. Skala's "leadership" was to allow the administrators to try to stampede
the Board into making an expensive, overspending decision.
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Progress Made Has Not Been Easy
The progress made during the last four years, has not come easily. I have gotten needed reforms and better management practices implemented in spite of this.
While I have been on the Board, Mr. Skala made one effort after another to prevent this progress while approving of some terrible accounting and management practices.
The District's Auditor reports directly to the Board. Did before, does now. The Auditor wrote what's referred to as a Management Letter, which describes
exceptions and what needs to be corrected. This makes the Board aware of non-compliance issues and what needs to be fixed. The District's Auditor explained
how the fiscal office was not balancing the checkbooks to the General Ledger. Balancing the books each month is a basic business function. It wasn't
being done. Mr. Skala knew about it and did nothing to make sure it didn't happen in the future. Instead Mr. Skala was praising, at public meetings,
his Chief Financial Officer at the time, as a "financial guru". Meanwhile, the fiscal office was back to its practice of not balancing the checkbooks
to the General Ledger. Today, the administration has to show documents to the Board that proves the checkbooks are balanced each month.
Even after my being on the Board for well over a year, Mr. Skala made sure trying to get information from administrators, was time consuming and difficult,
if you could get the information. While a Finance Committee board member, I had to file Freedom of Information requests (and obtain an opinion letter
from the Illinois Attorney General's office) in order to obtain documents Mr. Skala (as Finance chair and Board President) directed administrators to not
provide. What were those documents? Copies of specific leases the District had with vendors, for example. One was a copy of a large, expensive consulting contract
that Mr. Skala allowed an administrator to sign without informing the full board the contract even existed. I uncovered this large expense buried in the budget
and wanted to know what was specifically being provided for $150,000 in taxpayers' money.
The lack of important internal controls in our fiscal office has been on ongoing issue for many years. Mr. Skala told voters there were
internal audits to assure residents the District's financial numbers were correct. They never happened. As Board President he never saw an internal
audit report because they didn't exist. The District at that same time was submitting false reimbursement claims to the State. About 100 buses were
being depreciated that didn't exist. A hierarchy of administrators approved false student attendance numbers that had extra days in the month of May. Guess
what happened to all of the documents that had signatures on them that were submitted as false claims? Vanished. How much money are we talking about here? Millions.
As each scandal became public, Mr. Skala would say something to the effect how that was in the past, and the correct process and procedures have been put in place.
One scandal after another.
Mr. Skala sets anything-goes expectations and then constantly makes excuses for poor performance. Mr. Skala is content to hire new individuals whose lack
of work skills and experience results in $20,000 being paid to the I.R.S. in filing penalties and interest. I have been insisting on higher standards.
In my opinion, $20,000 was wasted and in the private sector it would result in a termination, not a pay raise.
Mr. Skala's see-no-problems management style didn't work and doesn't work. I understand human errors happen, that's not the issue. When Mr.
Skala learned there was an issue related to a payroll supervisor, he decided to not inform the full Board. Our Interim Superintendent knew and our new Superintendent
knew. I heard from residents what was going on and had to ask Dr. Burkey to tell me what's really going on. Mr. Skala has a whatever-he-can-get-with way of
doing things. This is completely the opposite of how I believe our District should be professionally managed top to bottom.
At one public meeting Mr. Skala made the excuse how our Superintendent cannot be expected to know what is in the Illinois School Code. That's part of his
job and that's also why he has unrestricted access to legal counsel, should there be any doubt or questions. In my opinion it is entirely reasonable to
expect our Superintendent to know if he is in a black, white or gray legal area.
The issue at the time was whether our Superintendent is expected to comply with the policies of our school district and also know what is legal and what is illegal.
I found it interesting how we expect hourly employees and students to comply with applicable school district policies but Mr. Skala was/is willing to give our
Superintendent a pass on complying with our District's policies. Mr. Skala's approach is if our Superintendent does not like a specific policy on a given day,
he can just ignore it without informing or asking the entire Board. How is this different than a "Do whatever you want" approach to managing our District? This
kind of direction from Mr. Skala is consistent with the number of scandals and deceptions that made headline news when he was Board President.
We have made progress and in private, I have worked with Dr. Burkey to resolve issues and questions. One thing is clear, this Board needs insider
oversight at the board table. A recent example is how Mr. Skala voted to remove from March's agenda, disclosure of a settlement of sexual harassment
claims by the District. The District paid the employee(s) the settlement monies, however, the Board has not authorized the payment(s) at a public meeting.
Skala did not want this to become public knowledge until after the school board election because it might reflect on him. I am insisting the Board publicly vote
on authorizing the payment(s) in much the same way we publicly vote on student discipline issues with complete individual confidentiality.
One of the practices Mr. Skala used as Board President was not informing all board members of what would be specifically discussed in
executive closed session. Only the vague legal descriptions were used. He would not allow me to review any documents ahead of time that
would be presented and discussed in closed session. I once specifically asked to see the real estate appraisal for the North school property
ahead of time so I could study it and ask questions. He refused. Mr. Skala's closed sessions were run as management by surprise sessions.
You would first learn our attorney would be addressing the board in closed session when you saw our lawyer at the meeting. Yet as "Candidate Skala"
he brags about how he works well with people. That is if you are willing to be a rubber stamp kind of person or board member.
My management style is to work with people on an adult, honest-dialogue, realistic, professional basis.
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Improved Management Practices
I diligently worked to get higher performance standards in place for our administrators and was successful. When I joined the Board, it was apparent Mr. Skala established and accepted a culture of low performance expectations and standards for administrators. This continued into when Dr. Burkey became Superintendent. Documents were being given to the Board that were not proofread for glaring errors. This continued to the point where, in Dr. Burkey's first year, the Board agreed with my proposal for new board policy requiring:
"The Superintendent or his or her designee shall ensure that information is carefully reviewed prior to dissemination to the Board."
The key phrase is "carefully reviewed". As a practical matter, the Board was spending hours correcting facts and figures during our open meetings.
Mr. Skala took no action as Board President to improve it.
After bringing up the point about careful review many times, I finally recommended we adopt it as written policy. I persuaded the Board to agree.
The direction had to be set by the Board in writing. Mr. Skala refused to do anything about the poor performance, not
wanting to ruffle any administrators' feathers. He was content to have hours added onto board meetings..
Skala put in place a culture of low performance / standards for administrators. You can imagine how poor it was, when
our District, with Dr. Burkey as Superintendent, needed this policy because things had gotten so far out of hand.
I proposed a Board policy whereby our lawyers are required to provide a copy of written communications to all board members.
The Board adopted my proposed policy. Mike Skala saw to it this policy was ignored by our law firms. In order to receive the
communications, required by the policy, I had to send our lawyers certified letters, as one board member, requesting they comply
with our board policy. They then did. It takes diligence in our District to make sure policy designed to prevent abuses is actually
practiced. In the past board members could say they "didn't know" or Mr. Skala could conveniently not disclose certain opinions to the full Board.
Adopting this policy was a needed reform in our District.
With much insistence and leadership on my part, the fiscal office provides much improved financial reporting information.
For years Mr. Skala covered up and denied there was an issue with accurately cutting payroll checks. Before I got on the Board,
payroll would not answer the phone on days employees received their paychecks. You can probably guess why. Mr. Skala found this to be
acceptable as Board President. A report of every payroll check error now goes to the Finance committee each month. We invested a lot of
money and time to get an ADP system working and from a Board oversight perspective, we now closely monitor the total payroll system.
As pointed out elsewhere we now require our fiscal office to provide proof they are actually balancing the checkbooks
to the General Ledger each month. When Mr. Skala was Board President he allowed the checkbooks to go unbalanced for an entire
year, saying we had to trust administrators. I respectfully disagree with Mr. Skala's approach which, in short, says the administrators
can do whatever they want, how and when without any proper oversight by the Board. Mr. Skala's approach allows for dangerously poor results,
giving him a political excuse of "I didn't know" when in fact behind the scenes he makes it his business to know.
Before I was on the Board, the budgeting process resulted in many accounts being budgeted for dollar amounts that often defied
rational explanation. I spent a huge amount of time and effort to examine and get our detailed line item budget "cleaned up."
The budget process is far superior today with my oversight and contributions on the Board. The budget itself is far less subject to
arbitrary manipulation by the administration, which was the norm when Mr. Skala was Board President.
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Oversight
Oversight is greatly needed on our Board and I provide greatly improved oversight. Mr. Skala as Board President routinely
prevented normal oversight and due diligence from taking place.
In June 2007, it was apparent the District's accounting for fund balances were off by over a million dollars. I said so
at the June Finance committee, hoping the two C.P.A.'s on our board would agree this needed looking into. Then the "actual"
numbers that were being used for preparing the 2008 budget came out. They again looked way off even though our fiscal office
said our Auditor had looked at their numbers. Again I asked the numbers be closely examined. Board members were miffed and
administrators didn't want to do any hard examination. The short of it is, in late 2008, the District's auditor did
revise the District's erroneous numbers by $1.5 million. I provide insightful observations and financial analysis that
other board members do not bring to the table.
A non-financial example: In 2005, when I got on the Board, I read in the newspaper one of our administrators was placed
on administrative leave. Mr. Skala asked the Board to rubber stamp an agreement with that administrator, but he
refused to tell the full board what happened. Residents told me what they heard happened, but Mr. Skala wouldn't.
Putting Mr. Skala back on the Board would bring the District back to when he practiced "no oversight allowed".
The area where oversight is needed the most is in the area of union contract negotiations. In 2005, administrators wanted to outsource a
large number of hourly jobs. When asked questions about how they came up with their numbers, their explanations were
lacking credibility. Finally the administrators told the Board their model was too complicated for us to understand. Yeah, right.
I persuaded the Board the huge cost savings, publicly bandied about, weren't real and were only a fraction of "as advertised."
We kept many quality employees without having to find out, after the fact, the savings were not real.
Mr. Skala proposed as an interim Superintendent, a team of three individuals. A requirement of Mr. Skala's recommended team was
the Board would have to agree in writing to approving each recommendation they made. In other words, the Board would have to
give up its oversight responsibilities in favor of three dictatorial administrators. I presented oversight arguments against
Mr. Skala's recommendation. The Board rejected Mr. Skala's recommendation.
Contract negotiations with the teachers union needs extensive oversight on this Board. On more than one occasion, I
corrected another board member's analysis which was off by millions of dollars. In 2006, Mr. Skala got $28/hr as
the supervision rate for ticket taking, time clock keeping and other activities, because he refused to allow responsible review and oversight.
One thing became apparent when analyzing the teachers union's financial proposals. It would take only one more bad
teachers contract and our District would be "toast." It takes few words to describe the devastating impact to our
finances and into our classrooms. The word "toast" succinctly sums it up.
We are currently in contract negotiations with the teachers union. This is serious business.
The HEA, Huntley Educational Association wants the Board to add costly new concessions onto the recently
signed teachers' contract, regarding pay increases and additional health care benefits. They are
looking for a new board, with Mr. Skala on it, to give them these concessions, after the school
board election. Simply said, apparently what they got is not good enough.
The HEA knows Mr. Skala will gladly work for them to get his own wife, a District 158 teacher,
(who has been a local teacher union official) more benefits. Without proper oversight, the taxpayers'
interests could be easily sold down the river.
When I have needed to, I have challenged our lawyers' advice and based on the District receiving
a second opinion, proven right. Legal opinions, especially the far reaching ones, need effective oversight
because they have to be correct. Mr. Skala's rubber stamp boards never did this.
I uncovered how some administrators were receiving secret cash payments of over five thousand dollar
each year that were not in their employment contracts. Mr. Skala knew about this practice, and admitted to
knowing about it at a public meeting. But during his tax hike campaign, he denied administrators were being
paid any extra money. With effective oversight on our Board these abusive practices can be prevented.
One past abuse practiced by Mr. Skala was preventing any independent checking of documents (non-student related) that
were handed out in closed session. The documents were all collected at the end of closed session. This resulted in the
base pay of an administrator being incorrectly increased by $8,000 because the $ amount was wrong in the information given to the Board.
Not all conflicts of interest can be prevented if too many individuals on the Board
ignore even obvious ones. As soon as Mr. Green recommended that his wife's boss be removed from that job,
Mr. Skala as Board President presiding over the meeting, should have interrupted and said how it was
inappropriate to be making that recommendation. It was apparent we had six board members at the time who had an anything-goes
approach when it comes to such things. It was apparent Mr. Green had already built support for that decision with other board members
before he brought it up at the meeting. A board member friend could have made the recommendation and Mr. Green could have recused himself.
Regretfully, that is not what happened.
The need for effective oversight by the Board was routinely dismissed by Mr. Skala as Board President.
He justified this by repeatedly telling the Board at our meetings "We have to trust our administrators." The oversight issue is not
about "trust" but rather reasonable "verification." Mr. Skala wanted none. With no verification he was able to present false information
to voters during his tax increase campaign, thinking no one would ever be the wiser.
Mr. Skala orchestrated the independent auditor's report to come out after both the school board election and tax referendum vote.
What kind of oversight is there when the audit report becomes public in May for the fiscal year ending the previous July?
To prevent me from asking questions, Mr. Skala arranged for the independent auditor to show up unannounced at the May 2005 meeting.
The auditor plunked down a 100 page report and then asked "Are there any questions?" This was done knowing there was no time to read the report.
In voting for the 2005-2006 preliminary budget, Mr. Skala had administrators include a second tax increase into
the second year, 2006. I noticed this and in open session, persuaded a board majority to reject and vote down the
second tax increase. Mr. Skala and Mrs. Skaja were the only two board members who voted for including a second year
tax increase into the preliminary budget.
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Standing Up For What's Right
Nepotism is a corrupt practice prohibited in the hiring of State employees. It is "favoritism granted to relatives or close friends, without
regard to their merit." Mr. Skala knows the Illinois School Code has no such restrictions or protections for taxpayers. He
hired as a top administrator his unemployed friend, a board member, who couldn't meet the written job description
qualifications and had zero school district experience. About $250,000 in salary, benefits and costs were consumed on/for
someone who resigned in less than two years.
The controversy could have been entirely avoided but Mr. Skala was intent on placing "his guy" into a top administrator job.
In short time, this administrator and Mr. Skala came up with a plan to abruptly cut half the bus stops. If thousands of phone calls and
emails are the measure, it was a fiasco. This shouldn't surprise you, but the new administration learned how 100 kids can't ride on a 73
passenger bus, all at the same time. As Dr. Burkey later said, we stopped having bus stops when 35 students were assigned to one, because at
that point, they became block parties.
The uproar caused by a proposal showing subdivisions across from the Square Barn campus being switched to attend the Reed Road schools was also avoidable.
I am not going to vote for someone who I believe is clearly not qualified for the job. Board members shouldn't be voting to give their friends jobs.
I voted "No" and publicly said the hiring process was wrong. A board member being interviewed by administrators for a top job should not
be voting for their raises in the same proximate time period. The average resident who has never attended a Board meeting can intuitively
figure this out, but Mr. Skala with all of his "experience" on the Board, can't.
New administrator (right) thanking Mr. Skala (left) after the hiring vote.
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Big Rea$ons Why Competent Oversight Matters
It should have been apparent to board members Mr. Skala and Mrs. Skaja.
A large increase in student enrollment should have had a large increase in State Aid the following year.
You don't need to be a "tax" guy or gal to figure out if your boss tells you a substantial raise is in your paycheck
and your check is lower, not higher, there's something not quite right.
More means more and when it is less, how much common sense does it take to say "Wait a minute,
what's up with this?" You might not know how to use the tax withholding tables or do the calculations
but you probably wouldn't accept the first "blow 'em off " answer trying to tell you more is actually less.
To say that one board member or one administrator should have noticed that less was not the correct answer, is being kind.
Our District has lost about $8 million in State Aid and is losing $2 million a year because Mr. Skala didn't notice
that State Aid went down when it should have gone up. By not noticing, our District
is now locked into one extremely expensive error.
There is a solution. For almost two years I tried to get our Board to move forward on doing something
about this. Recently, we made progress. As chair of the Legislative Committee, I put this item months
in a row on the agenda. We finally have legislation proposed in Springfield, Senate Bill 2283. We have
Mr. Quagliano to thank for writing the language in the bill.
The plan was to inform residents via the newsletter in March about the problem and the solution.
This would be before the School Board election. Coincidentally, the administration "forgot" and it
will be in April's newsletter. Why remind residents of how we lost $8 million and $2 million a year in the future?
There is potentially big money to be gained / saved by having independent oversight on our Board.
I bring this to our Board. Mr. Skala has proved he is more interested in raising your taxes as a
board member than looking at what's upside down and saying "Should that be right side up?" You
might not know exactly where the roof is leaking, but you probably would notice that when it's raining outside,
it is not supposed to be raining inside. That's not a lot to expect, as an equivalent, from Mr. Skala as a board member.
I have proven my oversight skills on our Board. Mr. Skala has demonstrated, again and again,
just the opposite. No one would have had to work for a large tax increase, if Mr. Skala simply
did his job at the time and paid attention to what was going on.
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