School boards must be fiscally responsible

The headline on your April 16 editorial asking to stop the “pension penalty insanity” is a powerful call to action, but unfortunately it won’t make a difference. The reason is our school boards are not accountable to the general public and have no incentive and, in some cases, have no ability to respond. One reason is that the school boards are increasingly populated by retired or active teachers, or their immediate relatives. This creates an undeniable conflict of interest and makes genuine change difficult to impossible.

The other reason is that school board elections are not seen by the general public as having a big financial implication for taxpayers. Greater transparency into school board decisions on topics like spiking the last year’s pay levels to drive up pensions would show how this is contributing to our overall pension liabilities now underfunded at $83 billion dollars.

My hope is that concerned citizens will band together to elect school board members who are able to provide more adult supervision to the financial decisions being made for our schools.

Willard Bishop

Barrington Hills