School freeloaders

"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk through the fence?" is one of my favorite quotes from Elvis Presley. To paraphrase that question, "Why move to Oak Park when you can get an Oak Park education for free?" The district has made transferring here so easy that for every 100 Oak Park kids, we now have 25 kids from outside Oak Park.

Once upon a time, the district said our good schools helped keep our property values high. They meant that people would pay to live here to take advantage of our school system. But that's ancient history. You no longer need to live here to get a good Oak Park education. With an Oak Park education freely available to anyone living outside Oak Park, there is zero incentive to move here for the schools.

Oak Park residents will soon be asked to pass a bond issue for the schools. The board has failed two out of the last three times to offer a tax that their constituents would approve. With the proposed tax, we will be asked to upgrade classrooms. For every four classrooms we upgrade for our kids, we will upgrade another classroom for the transfer students.

It's one thing to allow transfer students to take advantage of existing capacity, but now we are being asked to make capital improvements for transfers. Never before have we had 20 percent nonresident students. In these economic times, it would be hard enough to pay for our kids, let alone pay for so many nonresidents. We pay three school taxes now—wouldn't a fourth be too much? Glen Wilcox Oak Park