Don't let unions decide school elections

If you are a resident of Palatine, Hoffman Estates or Schaumburg and scratching your head wondering why your property taxes continue to climb and why on earth male and female students are now unclothed together in the locker rooms of our middle schools and high schools, look no further than your local school board elections.

Behind one set of candidates in Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211, you have a small group of private citizens working their tails off with very limited resources trying to turn out the vote and elect people who will actually represent the interests and values of our community. On the other side you have school employee union bosses, who have to do little more than blast an email to thousands of school employees telling them who to vote for on April 2nd. And believe me, they vote.

The predictable result is school employees represented by their union and the school board and no representation at all for the community. School board members endorsed by the local unions have a staggering conflict of interest - especially at contract negotiation time. Government employee unions were illegal for exactly this reason until 1959.

When government workers have collective bargaining rights, it becomes government by the public employee unions for the public employees. Government workers thrive at the expense of private sector workers. This eventually becomes unsustainable when the cost of government workers overwhelms the private sector. That is in a nutshell why Illinois is broke.

Unfortunately, until the law is changed the only thing the rest of us nonunion members can do is mark our calendars and encourage our neighbors to get out and vote on April 2 for the independent candidates: Pete Dombrowski and Mark Cramer.

Teri Paulson

Hoffman Estates