Tempers Flare in D218 School Board Race

As the 2011 election season heads for the finish line, some candidates are getting jumpy waiting for the other shoe to drop.

One of those races, Dist. 218, which includes , is boiling over. Challenger Linda Flanagan-Vahl has accused two-term school board member Ron Pratl of ethical breaches.

“I’m not a dirty politician,” Vahl said. “I just know he’s going to stuff a negative piece about me.”

Vahl says she filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Pratl’s nominating petitions in January. Her quarrel isn’t with signatures on his petitions, but with who circulated them.

According to Vahl, five Dist. 218 custodians helped Pratl circulate his petitions in the school board’s only contested race. The custodians didn’t do anything illegal, it’s just that the custodians’ union contract is up for renewal, Pratl said.

“Legally, the number of signatures are there, but it’s an ethical question in my opinion,” Vahl said. “There’s no good judgment there. The voters should know his tactics. This is an ethical matter.”

D218 officials verified that the custodians whose names appear as circulators on Pratl’s nominating petitions are district employees.

“(Pratl) primarily used staff. Are you trying to send a message to employees?” Vahl questioned. “Down the road he might have to make a decision about the jobs and livelihoods of people.”

Vahl was elected to two terms on the Oak Lawn Community School Dist. 229 school board and left in 2009. Last year, because of their growing family, Vahl and her husband, Greg, moved into a larger house in Dist. 218.

Pratl, of Chicago Ridge, served 16 years on the Chicago Ridge Park District board.  A Richards alum, Pratl was elected to the D218 school board in 2003.

Vahl says the custodians filed complaints saying they were “intimidated” by Pratl into circulating his petitions.

D218 Superintendent John Byrne said the district was aware of Vahl’s FOIA requests when contacted by Patch. The board's attorney, Burt Odelson, directed the district to respond to her FOIAs.

“When you file a FOIA, you get a piece of paper,” Byrne said. “We don’t have written complaints (by the district employees).”

Asked if there were verbal complaints made by district employees against Pratl, Byrne said: “On the advice of our attorney, I don’t have to respond to questions of verbal complaints. We don’t have to respond to FOIAs regarding verbal conversations.”

Pratl doesn’t understand why, mere days before the election, Vahl is bringing up the issue of his nominating petitions now.

“If my opponent has such a problem, why bring it up the week before the election?” Pratl said. “I don’t know this woman. She’s only lived in Dist. 218 a year. I’ve lived here my whole life. I went to Richards; so did my three kids and my siblings.”

Pratl said he and his wife were busy most weekends last fall traveling to watch his son play on his college’s basketball team.

“I never asked anyone to circulate. Normally I do it myself or with my wife,” Pratl said. “One of the officers in the janitor’s union asked if I minded if they helped (with my petitions). They all met in a restaurant. It was on a Saturday or Sunday.”

It was Saturday, Nov. 13, to be exact, according to the notary public’s date stamp. School board candidates needed only 56 signatures. The custodians gathered 101 signatures. Pratl said they didn’t really need the signatures because he and his wife already had gotten the required number–56–but according to notary public’s date stamp, their sheets weren’t turned in until Dec. 11.

Pratl says he’s proud of his service on the D218 school board.

“We have a surplus to weather the storm for the state budget cuts,” he said. “Our finance committee project out five to 10 years what’s going to happen. Two years ago we saw (the economic downtown) coming and the superintendent cut everything 10 percent.”

Taking a swipe at Vahl, who sat on the Dist. 229 board that negotiated the five-year teachers’ union contract that put the Oak Lawn Community High School district’s finances in peril, Pratl added: “We don’t have to charge being in the band or to play sport or to be in a club.”

Asked about the appearance of a conflict of interest by having custodians circulate his nominating petitions when their union contract is up for renewal, Pratl replied: “I’m always impartial … how can she be impartial when she went before the teachers’ union, whose contract is also up, asking for their endorsement and a contribution?”

Vahl confirmed that she did talk to the D218 teachers’ union in January, but the union invited all the school board candidates to come and speak to teachers. Pratl, she said, didn’t show up.

“The union sent written invitations to both Ron and I,” Vahl said. “I didn’t make any promises and I didn’t ask for an endorsement or contribution. I showed up and answered teachers’ questions about what my stance was on bussing and my experience negotiating union contracts.”

Vahl also took offense to Pratl’s comments about the teachers’ union contract that she was a part of negotiating while serving on the D229 board.

“We didn’t see it coming,” she said, referring to the housing market crash in the fall of 2008. “The business manager never mentioned it. Burt Odelson (D229’s legal counsel) negotiated the contract. Teachers gave up a lot of concessions. To blame me for the housing market fall is insulting.”

So why did she wait until now to bring up concerns about D218 custodians circulating Pratl's nominating petitions?

"This is not a last-minute thing that he's trying to say," Vahl replied, who said she mentioned it to SouthtownStar two months ago. (SouthtownStar ran a story last Thursday; Vahl contacted Patch about it on March 25.)

Patch asked Odelson whether D218 custodians had made verbal complaints that Pratl had intimidated them into helping him circulate his petitions. Odelson was at his other gig, the D229 school board meeting last week.

“We don’t have to answer questions about verbal complaints,” Odelson said. “We’re aware of Ms. Vahl’s accusations and we’re investigating it.”