Meet Your Candidates: Donald India, Golf School District 67, Board of Education

Your local school board debates important questions for your community, such as budget questions, policy ideas or referendums, ultimately issuing great impact on your community's reputuation and local tax rate. So listen up!

Golf School District 67 has three open spots with four-year terms on its school board. Four people are running for the seven-member school board.

Robert Clark, Samina Hussain, Donald India (write-in candidate), and Louise Karlin have all served prior terms on the board.

India raised his five children in Niles Township, and all five graduated from Golf District 67 schools. With a BS in electrical engineering and a MBA, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Niles Township High Schools and worked mostly for tech companies, in some cases as Vice President of Operations. He decided to register as a write-in candidate after learning about the January proposal to sell Golf Middle School to an auto dealership.

Morton Grove Patch collects the local candidates' beliefs and opinions with same Q&As for each candidate, publishes them in alphabetical order, and does not change submitted answers in major punctuation, style or content ways.

Morton Grove Patch collects the local candidates' beliefs and opinions with same Q&As for each candidate, publishes them in alphabetical order, and makes minimal changes to submitted answers in major punctuation, style or content ways.

Patch: How would you assess the state of the school district's budget?

India: Budget is fine.  Finances on the other hand are in need of a transfusion.

There have been 50+ board members since 1979 when the district finance’s were first in trouble and the old Golf School on Oak Park was closed and demolished as a cost savings. In 1989, the SB decided to sell Hynes School because of dwindling finances. In 2011, the SB investigated selling Golf Middle School. Throughout these 32 years, the SB has done everything possible to avoid raising tax rates through a public referendum. Project funding has been cut; curricula is reduced; staff are doubling up on duties; some district jobs have been outsourced (kitchen) while some outside contracts have been eliminated and brought back to support staff (snow plowing and now HVAC/Boiler maintenance); non-teacher position salaries are frozen; and the teachers’ union has given back salary. 

The option left is a referenda new funding ballot question.

Patch: If expenses need to be reduced, exactly what would you cut? Be specific.

India: I would push for the district to work with Lou Lang, John D’Amico, Ira Silverstein and other legislative decision makers to bring attention to the financial state of schools in our area. Several times consolidation of schools has been discussed within Niles Township. It never gets support due to private interests: administrative jobs, increased busing away from favorite local school, and in some cases rivalry.

There are 9 elementary school districts in Niles Township. Morton Grove is represented by 5: 63 (Maine) and 67, 68, 68, 70 (Niles Township). Glenview saw this as a problem in the early 90s and consolidated all school districts under one Glenview 34 School District. If you live in Glenview – you go to Glenview Elementary School District.

If all reductions have been made then cuts in administrative overhead through consolidation of school districts with the help of our legislators may be the only option left.

Patch: If more revenue needs to be raised, exactly what would you propose? Be specific.

India: It is very clear that my position would be to thoroughly investigate consolidation first and then referendum.  However, the kind of referendum is a big question for debate. 

- A specific funding bond for facilities improvement at Hynes, at Golf or combined.

- An Operations Fund referendum to address the $2 million of construction identified by the architects.

- An Ed Fund referendum large enough to take care of the Ed Fund immediate needs.

- An Ed Fund referendum to cover all Ed Fund and Ops Funds requirements.

Other possible referenda are:

- A referendum to allow the district to utilize the entire legal tax rate for one year.

- An increase to the bonding authority to allow the district to borrow more money through bonds.

So there are many options but all require public opinion questions (referenda).

I would strongly push for option 3: a large Ed Fund referendum.

Patch: Do you feel any changes need to be made in the curriculum?  

India: So much has been lost with the round-robin of superintendents in the last 6 years. 

The curriculum needs to be strengthened and in some cases returned to what was available to our students a decade ago. Restoring the media director with a charter to increase the use of internet based instruction and learning is a start. I would thoroughly investigate the use of tablets with WiFi internet access for each child in the middle school.  250 X $350 = $87,000 and could be the least costly solution to providing students with technology. This is much less than one dedicated computer lab.  Collaborative teaching was pervasive but now it is being presented to this board as a new concept. Cross curricula learning is a must. Children need to be taught how to work with others as no one in private industry just does one thing any more. 

Patch: How would you assess the district’s expense-per-pupil ratio? Are taxpayers getting adequate value for their dollar?

India: Unfortunately it takes a lot of money to educate students so the answer is YES and NO.

While many may believe that too much is already being spent, it is not. 

Yes, in that this appears to be all that the district can afford to do without additional revenue.

No, in that with not that much more revenue the district may be able to increase learning geometrically, thus benefiting all students forever.

The dismal financial situation in Springfield reducing aid to schools and no Federal aid to schools in our area, the only way out of this financial situation is to increase revenue through referendum.  

I would stress the use of new technologies to deliver new content to teachers and then to students – distance learning is a reality in many parts of the world. 

Understanding and then utilizing internet-based learning is a requirement in 2011 and costs money to develop.

Patch: Are the district’s test scores adequate? If not, what specific measures should be taken to improve them?

India: Test scores are not a function of revenue though most would argue against this statement. In the 90s, The First in World Consortium proved that access to information not the cost per pupil were directly related to the success of students i.e. test scores. Test scores are fine and appear to be above average.

Besides the tests required by Springfield, we need to investigate other methods to evaluate our student learning to ensure each student is assessed and a plan to improve each student is implemented. But this again costs money to develop, staff, train and implement.

We need to invest more in our parents’ access to the educational needs of our children. This important aspect of learning may be getting ignored in our rush to reduce costs to stay fiscally sound. But this also takes money to staff.

Patch: What’s on your wish list for facilities and technology and how would you pay for them?

India: I always thought that the Golf Middle School gym was inadequate and should be replaced or at least expanded. Plans have sat since the mid-80s as other priorities were funded. I would push for a specific referenda question for a stand-alone gym that can serve the needs of the middle school during the school day and the needs of the community through a cooperative agreement with the Park District or Village during the evenings and weekends.

However, I would not even think of this until the finances for the core Education Fund is secure and stable.

Patch: How is morale among teachers and staff and how can it be improved?

India: I have met with several teachers over the past months and they appear to be in good spirits but act like employees in many companies who have given up raises, benefits and are doing more with less. This can ‘get to you’ over time. 

Also, teachers must be spending more time addressing the “problem” child than before.

With cutbacks in the state many programs available to families are gone.  Children get hurt in these situations. Unfortunately, these services are NOT mandated by the Springfield. Since it is not mandatory or required to produce good test scores, school sponsored programs get cut before required classroom curriculum.

Restoring these programs will help morale as teachers could have needed help to address these problems.

I would also strongly suggest teachers spend institute days collaborating together to investigate new ways to work together and team teach (a basic philosophy of the Middle School concept).

Patch: Many districts have started programs for students in civil behavior and alcohol and drug prevention. Does this district need to adopt these or similar programs?

India: The SB can not be blamed for cutting these programs back but they can be blamed for not watching the finances more closely so these programs could continue.

A referendum has been discussed by the board for years, the superintendent’s community finance task force recommended two referenda in February 2010, the SB ignored the finances as if the proposed sale of Golf was going to solve all problems. Yet the proposed sale of Golf would only address the facilities and not the more important education of our children. There should have been a referendum question on this April 5th ballot. This inaction has put the finances of SD67 in jeopardy.

Instead the SB spent a tremendous amount of time investigating something that would have been stopped with one phone call to the Park District. However, as a silver lining, they did get the community interested in their problem.

Patch: What else would you like voters to know about your positions on issues, point of view or qualifications?

We have lived in the district for 32 years and 25 of those years at least 1 of my 5 children was attending school in the district. All 5 are graduates of Golf School District; all attending K thru 8. I have a BS in Electrical Engineering with an MBA and mostly worked for high tech companies in the Chicago area as Vice President of Operations for several companies. As Chief Operating Officer of Niles Township High Schools, I was responsible for all non-academic activities.

I worked on SD219 referenda communities for both the Education Fund and Facilities improvement.

As a school board member for SD67, I worked tirelessly to reverse the decision to sell Hynes School.  In 15 years, SD67 went from being on the financial edge and selling a building to a successful district well in the ‘black’ financially as SD67 grew from 380 students to almost 550.