Upper Middle Class Racketeering

In my previous post on the Wilmette School Board, VIP Thinks Above Law, I forgot about Tim Scherman, the professor and union negotiator negotiating on behalf of the board.

This further note came in from a friend, a member of Illinois Loop, with some editing:

The American Enterprise article by Lewis Andrews is timely.

The evidence...

Currently, the Wilmette School Board is controlled by people with personal conflicts of interest. Recently, Greg Polan, President of Alltown Bus Company (which has won the business of Evanston, Skokie and New Trier since Polan was elected to the School Board), was arrested in multiple misdemeanor charges and lied to a police officer.

Special Education attorney John Relias is currently serving his 14th year on the board.

Tim Scherman is a union member and leader in the American Federation of Teachers; he represented the Wilmette School Board at the teachers's contract negotiations in 2003.

School Board President Al Dolinko cast the decisive vote which authorized Wilmette School Board to fight the tax appeals of Wilmette residents, after he himself successfully petitioned his property taxes just prior to joining the school board. Superintendent Max McGee wrote a passionate letter to the Sun Times during the 2005 election defending Dolinko saying, "he did not appeal his taxes while on the board."

Ron Gilbert resigned from the 2005 School Board election campaign citing as the " reason" his belief that the information about Board President Dolinko appealing his own taxes was not true. The next week, the Wilmette Life report on the election included the fact that Board President Dolinko did petition his own property taxes--justified by the need to correct the description of his property. (Anyone who has ever remodeled a home in Wilmette knows property descriptions are corrected all the time, without a tax assessment appeal.) Tax assessment appeals require onerous work gathering information on "comparable" properties.

Does Lewis Andrews live in Wilmette?

Here is an excerpt from THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE July/August 2006 issue, "A Coming Crisis in Suburban Schooling?" by Lewis M. Andrews:

Margaret Tannenbaum, professor of education at New Jersey's Rowan University and formerly on the school board in her home town, notes that the resulting quid pro quos are never publicly stated, but always clearly understood. In most cases, she explains, parent board members know that being "supportive of the schools" is code for accommodating generous salary and benefit increases for unionized teachers and schools administrators. In return, even the most superfluous perks for suburban schoolchildren -- like academic credit for district-subsidized trips abroad -- are deemed "educational" by local school officials.

The existence of self-serving relationships between municipal officials and the public employees they supposedly supervise is hardly news. But suburban school boards and administrators are especially gifted in their ability to portray mutual backscratching to the broader taxpaying public as academic idealism. Organized public-school parents have in many places ensured that both Republicans and Democrats produce local candidates who think identically on the 65 to 80 percent of local expenditures that are related to public education. On most school boards and town councils, would-be reformers have little or no influence.....

The successful partnership between suburban parents and professional educators is facilitated by America's continuing tolerance for a blatant conflict of interest, whereby a school board member is permitted to vote on an issue that can directly affect his own family. It is not an exaggeration to say that public schooling in many suburbs is a form of upper-middle-class racketeering. Under the banner of "advancing learning;' parents of district children and their public-sector allies collaborate to serve their own narrow interests, at the expense of the broader taxpaying community.

Andrews goes on to document the growing concern by many parents of the lack of academic challenge in suburban schools, as core knowledge is crowded out by expensive frills, and the emerging backlash as property taxes constantly rise, pricing out parents and seniors from the community:

Those with the most obvious reason to be critical are voters without children in public schools, many of them increasingly restless under heavy and soaring local tax burdens. With house assessments ballooning, the property taxes that support most schools are becoming onerous burdens for many newlyweds, widows, families with children in private or parochial schools, or older couples on fixed pensions. Property tax collections went up an average of 23 percent nationwide between 2000 and 2004, and are now approaching $300 billion -- totaling very close to what Americans spend annually on mortgage interest.

Of course, if you are burdened by property taxes and are in the education business, a little back scratching might help---run for your school board.

And in related news, Chicago clout is on trial and has been found guilty. Sun Times. Tribune.