Not satisfied with Dist. 207 explanations

No matter how carefully I listen or how much I read, I am still at a loss to understand why District 207 is letting go of 135 staff members, including 75 teachers.

The explanations that have been given and repeated again and again refer to "an accounting error" that is never explained, as well as the downturn in tax revenue and investment income.

The purpose of having a huge reserve fund of $80-plus million is to be able to handle the variation and timing of tax revenue and investment income.

It is the "accounting error" that has yet to be explained. It only took the new financial officer for the district a month to find it and that threw the district into the personnel chaos that we have heard about since September.

We the public, the taxpayers, have the right to know exactly how much the "accounting error" cost the district, who was responsible for the "error", if the "error" involved any wrongdoing and if so, if is it being investigated. We paid the salary of the chief financial officer and we elected the board of education to oversee the use of the public funds. For the first time, we paid an outside attorney to negotiate the current teacher contract ... and 15 months later, the public funds that should be available to honor that June 2008 contract are missing or unavailable.

It may be convenient to blame teachers, but public comment at board meetings showed students and parents know differently. It is the students of this community that will pay for what must be a very large accounting error."

A public accounting of what happened to the funds that were to be used to honor the contract signed by the Board of Education needs to happen now. It needs to happen in a clear and unambiguous way - in the newspaper for all to see - before we give away the education this community wants for its students, and the reputation for three fine high schools that this community has built.

Margaret Gallagher-Smythe

Park Ridge