Dear Everyone,
The Bears played well today, and beat the Falcons. There is joy in Hinsdale, unalloyed but the
Steelers’ defeat to the Browns, since Cindy and Jasper are away (in Cleveland),
where Jasper and she are visiting Lucas at Oberlin, and doing Jasper’s first
official college visit at Case Western.
I have heard second hand that Jasper thinks there is too much “open
space” on the way to the town of Oberlin.
I don’t think they got to Oberlin in time to see Lucas’ tennis team
triumphant over their opponents of the weekend, whoever they were.
The main scandal in Hinsdale these days is the bad behavior
of the school board. At the last
election, a couple of tea party candidates were elected by slim majorities, and
they have been playing extreme hard ball in negotiating with the Teacher’s
Union. The teachers have been trying to
get negotiations going for almost a year and have been without a contract since
June. Thus far they have conceded some on
practically every point. However, the
last straw was the school board ‘negotiators’ trying to force them to take a 35
years process to reach ultimate pay seniority, instead of the 19 years the
teachers presently have. All of the
suburbs around here have around a 19 year ladder. The teachers had already given away a lot in
health care benefits, pensions, etc., but this step was a bit too far. (Plus, all the misleading (and expensive)
fliers the school board distributed around to Hinsdale residents and the
shenanigans where they tried to arrest teachers for liking a Facebook post.) At the last open board meeting over 1000
residents came to complain about the school board’s actions - - after all, most
people move to Hinsdale (and play very high property taxes) because they want
their kids in the public school here.
After a lot of pressure and petitions, the board put two ‘normal’ people
on the school board negotiating team.
Hopefully, this will interrupt the possible teachers’ strike (the
teachers were forced to this action because it was the only way for them to see
the boards 120 page budget, instead of inflammatory dribs and drabs over the
last few months). The board has no
contingency plan if the teachers do end up striking, and the State ruled
recently in a similar case in Lake Forest that school days will not count if an
entire seven period day is not in operation.
Given that the main fight right now is over surplus money - - yes, despite
setting a 0% levy last fall, the board has sufficient funds to pay the teachers
what they are owed! – it is hard to understand what wacky world the Tea Party
school board electors live in. I have
tried to avoid most of these issues, but the behavior of the board has been so
egregious it has been impossible to ignore, although, in their defense, they
haven’t tried to ban books, or curtail teaching evolution, and climate change. You
know that they won’t remain invested with the rights and responsibilities of
their office come next election cycle.
People are really pissed off.
Work has been going along as well as usual. This Sunday’s Chicago Tribune had a first
page story about a young woman (~30 years old) with a terrible brain
cancer. I wasn’t paying much attention
to the story until, skimming the story, I realized she was ‘my’ patient. It’s a truism that bad disease happens to the
nicest people, and she seems to be following the rule. I plan on purchasing Dr. Gawande’s latest
book about end of life care http://www.amazon.com/Being-Mortal-Medicine-What-Matters/dp/0805095152
with plans to share it with all of you as you desire. I could bring it to Mexico. (By the way,
anyone have selections for book club this year?)
Love, H.
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