Opinion: Community of Voters Have Power Over Board of Education

A letter to the editor, submitted by Madelyn Gonzalez Schaik

I find it disturbing that the District 86 School Board, who have been teachers, benefiting significantly from their Union-won teacher pension are ready to halt my children’s education, disrupt the livelihoods of our educators and ruin a school system that has been recognized as one of the top High Schools not only in Illinois but in the United States. What is Hinsdale District 86 Board of Education’s real agenda? I believe for a few of our BOE elected members, it’s a personal one, which has no business in our school.

It’s distasteful for our BOE members to claim our teachers are motivated by avarice when they, themselves, are beneficiaries of a solid teacher pension system; which they are now attempting to ruin. It’s interesting that a BOE member’s retirement income, from his teacher pension, is over $170,000. Certainly other property owners contributed to his pension plan and didn’t make him walk a picket line.

It’s apparent Mr. Skoda and his Board majority cabal aren’t concerned about the future of the school district they were elected, by one of the lowest voter turnouts in ages, to oversee…on behalf of the community, at the behest of the voters of the community. Would Mr. Skoda and his mis-directed majority Board members want their children taught by new teachers paid at a second-tier salary program? “You get what you pay for”, Mr. Skoda.

Our teachers proposed a competitive agreement in late September; they’ve now “sweetened” the pot by agreeing to additional concessions, to avoid what would become a disaster to our school system and our children.

If public employees’ collective bargaining rights are distasteful to many of our BOE members, they should return their pension checks to the communities that funded them, move to Wisconsin, join up with Governor Walker and stop destroying what has been built in Hinsdale. After what you, Mr. Skoda, and your three followers have accomplished, do you think anyone would elect any of you again?

My husband and I moved to Hinsdale when my oldest son was 2 years old, he is now a senior at Hinsdale Central High School. We moved to Hinsdale mainly due to the great school system. Both of us grew up in Chicago, my husband attending highly ranked private schools, I attended the Chicago public school system, with minimal budgets, gangs, poverty, drugs and the list goes on. I still managed to graduate with honors and attend college; most of that success is owed to the many supporting teachers I had in High School, not members of the Board of Education.

As a community, we have to ask ourselves, who really has the power, the voters as a community or the politically motivated Board of Education members? As you sit and ponder, “should I attend the Board meetings in support of our teachers? Will my attendance or voice make a difference?” The answer is, yes. Yes it will, but more importantly, ask yourselves, “who has the best interest of our children and our community in mind?” If your answer is the teachers standing in-front of our children daily; support your teachers and show the mid-guided members of the Board of Education, they are not our voice, they do not have the power, we do; as tax payers, as parents, as grandparents, as community members.

After the distraction and dysfunction created by the District 86 School Board, I totally understand how important the success of our children are to teachers and for the first time, I’m extremely grateful for everything my high school teachers did for me as a child, as a student, as a future American adult. It was my teachers who guided my success, my career; not the BOE members, who throughout high school, I never met or even knew they existed.

We have the power to demonstrate to the board, that its members’ personal political agenda is not welcome at Hinsdale Central High School. I ask you to please support the Hinsdale Central High School teachers, attend the public Board meetings and force the board to accept the current contract. The next BOE meeting is scheduled Monday at Hinsdale Central High School cafeteria at 7 p.m. The Board of Education members do not have the right to dictate the future of our children, WE DO!

Madelyn Gonzalez Schaik
Hinsdale Resident and HCHS Parent