I received a robo call yesterday afternoon and this time I didn't hang up.
I was invited to attend a Public Forum featuring our School Board candidates monitored by Dan Proft.
Dan Proft, who was the spokesman for the town of Cicero and the Morton High School District of Berwyn and Cicero. Dan Proft who ran for Governor of Illinois in the Republican Primary and lost. Dan Proft who invited Alan Keyes to run against Barack Obama for Senator. Dan Proft whose name is like a "dog whistle" to my ears.
So I went to "teh" Google and did a little research.
The Tea Party in Illinois is targeting school districts. They have candidates running in just about every district this year. I also discovered the names of most of them. Seems that they want to get in to the school districts and bring about the "change" in fiscal policy as their grassroots agenda.
School Boards are local and nonpolitical, so it is easy to run for the position and get in without anyone knowing one's politics. A neat deal since most people never know who is running anyway so they guess.
I discovered the Tea Party candidate for Lemont but she is running as a "write-in" and from my experience as an election judge these past 7 years, voters do NOT know how to do a "write-in" correctly...so she was probably not going to get elected.
I also discovered the the Leagues of Young Women of Lemont was sponsoring a "meet your school board candidates" that evening, so I got my sample ballot and ran over there. I am glad I did. The place was packed. I listened to the candidates, put plus signs next to the ones I liked, picked up any literature they had available and left feeling very successful.
But Dan Proft was going to be at the Tea Party forum today...should I go?
OK, I went. They were all cheerful with coffee, and cakes and cookies and patriotic table decorations and books for sale and a powerpoint presentation which began right after the prayer and the Pledge.
Joe Calomino, director of the Illinois Chapter of Americans for Prosperity who get their talking points from the Koch brothers, introduced the powerpoint guy...I forgot his name. Dan Proft was caught in Chicago traffic and the rush hour ends after 7 PM.
The powerpoint presentation was slick with charts and graphs and numbers and was very fast. It "explained" how the District had misspent and mishandled the funds and also that the district really was not in any trouble financially and that the 20 million dollar bond issue was unnecessary since funds were increasing every year!
As the slides flipped by, I noticed that the graphs all went up with a 75 degree angle.
Since the numbers were all adjusted for inflation, I found it hard to believe that teacher's salaries had increased by 54% since 1959. As a retired teacher, I found that my $50,000 salary seemed to buy me as much as my $10,000 salary did in 1975.
The Lemont school district tried to pass a referendum in November for $8 million which failed and now they are trying for a $20 million "loan" (referendum) to their working cash fund.
It is a District that had "financial" problems, poorly explained in the papers which has people many people saying that the board mismanaged and misspent. Even to the extent that the Board went to a conference and charged the District $4500 for expenses! As a former teacher, I really don't think that that $4500 expense caused the financial problems they say the District is in...except they are saying that the District has no problems...it is fine. The closing of 1 of 5 schools and the elimination of 71 teachers and raising class sizes to 40 is not unusual for Illinois schools. It seems they talk out of both sides of their mouths.
My husband spoke up saying, "This is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show. These charts make no sense, they increase exponentially. It goes up like a rocket! Where did you get these figures?"
A woman near us said, "That is the point!"
The powerpoint ended and we were getting really nasty looks. I guess exponential was too difficult to understand.
We decided to leave, we had learned enough. Dan Proft had arrived but I didn't want to stick around...my husband was getting angry and the crowd was not friendly.
The speaker had said that the figures were from the Bureau of Labor Statistics so I looked up some charts for myself. I figured he must have used beginning salaries and compared them to final salaries. None of the tables I found showed a 54% salary increase in teacher pay.
So I missed Dan....but 5 of the 10 candidates were a no show and the numbers attending were about half of the Wednesday night meeting. Probably because this meeting was on Parent-Teacher Conference Night were teachers had to attend school until 9 PM and the only attendees were elderly or those whose children attended private or home-school.
Check out your School Board Candidates. The Tea Party is teabagging big time!