District 15 mess a shared responsibility

Your story on the budget to date at District 15 outlines a dilemma facing most suburban school districts; i.e. we want good schools, but we can’t afford what we have today. It’s an all too familiar story.

It seems to me that all of us are responsible for this mess; i.e. teachers unions, administrators, school boards and citizens, and the only way out of it will be finding new ways to work together.

Union leader, Lisa Nuss, plays the “don’t criticize us” card — even though the record will show that the union has consistently won wage increases that are well above market levels and successfully imposed work rules that discourage innovation.

Tim Millar, school board president, should be applauded for making the necessary spending cuts. He and his predecessors, however, can’t duck responsibility for bringing the district to this point of financial crisis. The school board made decisions to accept expensive and restricted and restrictive contracts in order to maintain labor peace.

Superintendent Scott Thompson is complicit by what he doesn’t say. Your March 15 article only quotes him as offering general assurances that everything will be OK once this is settled, but he says nothing about facing up to the real problems of the district.

Now what about the taxpayers; about two-thirds to three-quarters of most tax bills go to support the schools, yet there were no taxpayers at the meeting. There were hundreds of teachers there supporting their position, but why no taxpayers?

What we don’t seem to have is a critical mass of concerned and committed citizens who will provide the adult supervision to the management of our schools. We’ll all be facing the same problems as District 15 until we get to that point.

Willard Bishop

Barrington Hills