Being thoroughly pillaged leaves one short on sympathy

Lab reports, phone messages from doctors, long-term prognoses. None are among my favorite things. But I didn't make Superintendent Connie Neale's health my business. She did.

Every Elgin Area School District U-46 taxpayer, me included, will be paying forever for Neale's every test, surgery, hospitalization and deductible, courtesy of a spineless school board. Seems to me the least we could expect was a general explanation of what ails her. So I called her. She said she understood why I would ask, but gave no real answer.

"It's a chronic condition that is very private," she said. "I don't think it's appropriate to have a conversation about it." Asked if the condition was life-threatening, she said she wouldn't talk about the "scope of the illness." And when asked if she felt she would ever return to work from a medical leave she begins next week, she said it was "premature to make such a decision."

Fair enough, that last, but the board president said the district is preparing for her retirement. Plenty of people might believe she's entitled to her privacy, too, when it comes to her health, and normally I might agree.

But health-care costs are putting enormous pressures on taxpayers, both at home and in the ever-bigger bills the public sector sends them. They see themselves paying more and more for less and less, and then they see Neale getting a free medical ride on their money. I don't think it's irrational of them to expect a simple "heart problems" or "cancer" or a specific "disease" sort of explanation. Without one, Neale's generally aloof attitude elicits not sympathy, but resentment that she won't acknowledge their significant financial support with an explanation or a thank-you.

This board and the one previous to it have assuredly committed taxpayers to supporting Connie Neale in every possible way. In fact, given how we taxpayers will be supporting her every moment long after she leaves here, it wouldn't be all that unreasonable for them to expect a weekly report on her activities.

Not only have U-46 taxpayers been committed by the school board to paying for every dollar of her medical care, they've been committed to paying for her husband's, too. They also are paying for multiple retirement plans and will pay for disability, life and long-term-care insurance for the rest of Neale's days. We'll pay cash at her top salary of well over a quarter-million dollars a year for more than 430 sick days when she officially leaves. That's 86 sick days per year of service, something taxpayers can only think fantastical.

All this for a woman who has worked in the district for a mere five years. Only a school board could give so much of somebody else's money to a mere visitor without blinking an eye. She isn't a beloved, 35-year teacher who changed the lives of generations of students. Most people wouldn't recognize her if she walked up to them on the street. She merely stopped by for her pot of gold, leaving the district with a good financial officer, but five high schools that can't meet achievement standards, an unfinished contract with teachers and a discrimination lawsuit that could cost millions while obliterating the district.

She'll be sitting on her porch in Kansas, watching the sunset, while U-46 taxpayers may have to take two and three jobs to pay the bills she created with her condescension, passed on effectively to susceptible board members and landing the district in the discrimination lawsuit.

I wish I could feel some sympathy for her medical plight, which may be very serious. Maybe I could if she told me what was wrong rather than asking me to take it on faith.

Without such an explanation, it's hard for the pillaged to have any real sympathy for the pillager, even if her tale becomes a sad one.