Let’s hope Dist. 227 learns from ridiculous and costly legal battle

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Updated: February 21, 2012 8:24AM

Nearly two years, more than $100,000 in legal fees and apparently 14 brand new toilets later, the Rich Township High School District 227 school board appears to have finally come to its senses.

And yet, the whole mess still stinks.

The south suburban school board had waged a legal battle to eliminate Southland College Preparatory Charter High School in Richton Park, which opened in 2010 as an alternative to the district’s high schools. Contending that Southland and the subsequent loss of funding ultimately would bankrupt the district, the school board sued.

After a Cook County judge ruled in Southland’s favor in December 2010, the board chose to fight on. About three weeks ago, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the lower court’s decision that sided with the charter school.

Then finally, at a school board meeting Tuesday night, Betty Owens, president, announced that District 227 would not appeal, thereby officially ending its fight against Southland — at least its legal fight. (I suspect some board members may still be a little salty about the black eye it suffered.)

Sitting there at the school board meeting Tuesday night, I couldn’t help thinking on the one hand, “Well, it’s about time!”

And on the other, “Now, will y’all please get down to business and clean up this mess!”

That mess is a school district that spends $16,601 a year per pupil, according to the Illinois Interactive Report Card. That’s $66,404 after four years.

For that investment, only 27.4 percent of students met or exceeded standards on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, or PSAE. Meanwhile, the average salary of administrators in 2011 rose to $128,093, from $113,516 in 2010, an increase of 12.8 percent.

The good news is that the Rich Township high school graduation rate at 90.9 percent exceeds the state’s average. But given that more than 7 out of 10 students test below the norm, one has to wonder just how much a District 227 diploma is really worth.

For the sake of the children, the school board has to do better. And the courts have suggested that perhaps Dr. Blondean Y. Davis — who spearheaded the charter school — and the success of Southland can show them how to steer its schools from the proverbial creek.

“We are left with no doubt that the establishment of the charter high school is in the best interests of the students it was designed to serve and, eventually, its establishment may well serve the best interests of all District 227 students to the extent the academic success of the charter school raises the educational bar for the other three high schools,” Judge Rodolfo Garcia wrote in the Appellate Court’s majority opinion.

“Nothing in the record supports District 227’s contention that the establishment of the charter school is contrary to the best interests of all the students in District 227.”

Nothing?

You heard the court right — absolutely nothing. The truth is in the numbers. And those numbers haven’t added up to overall student success.

The truth is indeed in the numbers: At least $140,000 spent on a fruitless lawsuit and another $4.2 million for new administrative digs, all amid a reported $5.2 million budget deficit; the purchase of new iPads for those board members shameless enough to take them and, according to reliable sources, 14 brand-spanking-new toilets — to replace older but fine working ones — just to coronate the new administrative offices.

And I can’t stop thinking, “How apropos.”

Now, if they could just get the schools out of the toilet.