DGreport.com

Last night’s District 58 board meeting was notable for many reasons.

It quite possibly is the first time the board has discussed censuring a member — a move that appears certain to occur when the vote is called next month.

It quite possibly is the first time in a very long time that a board member has stood so defiantly against the unwritten code of collegiality that has ruled the school board for years.

And it certainly was a rare opportunity for the public — those who could find seats among the BOE faculty, administration and staff — to see how a decade (at least) of dysfunction plays out in the face of a monumental and ill-advised challenge to the status quo.

I’ll call it as I see it: Scott O’Connell, crusader and maverick, needs to ratchet down the attack or risk losing not just his credibility, but the ability to perform the job he was elected to do.

If he has a mandate, and I would argue he does, it serves no good if he squanders it with trumped up challenges, administrative make-work, and an overly critical approach to every scintilla of school board business, no matter how insignificant.

There are at least a few on the board who might have taken O’Connell seriously if he had been more measured, more balanced and more thoughtful in his approach. Now, a year into his term, he has provided his detractors with enough material to merit not just a censure, but their longstanding disregard.

But if O’Connell has erred grievously, so has the board. There remains in that chamber an entrenched clubbiness — an us-against-them attitude — that proclaims itself in the eye-rolling, the guffaws and the titters of derisiveness that greet not just O’Connell’s questions and pronouncements, but often those of civilians who fall on the wrong side of the divide as well.

Last night, there were two camps arrayed against each other. They each took turns at playing the cheerleader and the pit bull — and neither emerged blameless as a result.

The district’s rules seem to be: If you’re O’Connell, or one of his zealous supporters, you are fair game. A board member may loudly deride you, the superintendent may call you out and the audience of school district minions may whisper their contempt at will.

But if you represent the district, with your professed first concern for the children, you can get away with behavior – even for years – that would be intolerable on any other dais in town.

Just try to summon the image of the village manager or the park district administrator behaving as the District 58 school board has allowed the superintendent to behave all these years.

Exchanging sharp words with parents and taxpayers? Ripping into a school board member in public? Laughing at people whose opinions or positions he disdains? This unprofessional behavior has stood, even to the present day.

The truth is, this school board deserves Scott O’Connell. Not because they aren’t all good, dedicated people with the best interests of our children at heart. But because they have allowed bullying in their midst for years, they have failed to ask the hard questions in a public forum, and they have embraced too willingly the view that a school board’s role is to support rather than respectfully challenge.

It just doesn’t play. You can’t ignore bad behavior from the administration then attempt to paint this maverick member as something beyond the pale without compromising your own credibility in the process.

I believe there are many on the board who truly understand this and are dedicated to working hard to remedy the issues that brought them to this point. Claire Jaros, for example, proposed a board retreat as a means to develop a more effective working relationship. Joe Leo made the first attempt I’ve seen to reel Martin in. Mary Ellen Young was genuinely concerned with the fracture on the board and whether a censure — the legal standing of which one audience member questioned — was the best way to heal it.

And Marshall Schmitt took the high road even as he was excoriating O’Connell for his ill-conceived challenge to the board’s committee process and his willingness to bring the Illinois Attorney General into the spat. Schmitt laid out his case, clearly and reasonably, while treating O’Connell fairly and respectfully.

The high ground is where the entire board should aim to be, all the time. That’s the only place that will allow each member to see not only O’Connell’s error but the dysfunction that has brought them to this painful, but unavoidable, pass.

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