Another D65 Senior Staffer Moves on

"Hitting the Road with Horton" and the MIRACLES continue

First a housekeeping note - I’ve decided to continue with the project. It’s kind of a Godfather 3 thing: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”

If you were a paid subscriber, I just left your subscriptions on, so if you want to stop that, email me: tom@foiagras.com. I do this as a hobby, not for money, so I won’t be offended if you stop (although I do appreciate the donations too).

I’ve got a few good stories in the hopper on all three Evanston governmental bodies: D65, ETHS, and even City Government. I’ve also got a really wild demo of some GPT technology that I’ve been developing for processing vast amounts of data from governments that I’ll demo and will change citizen journalism.

So Stay Tuned.

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Another District 65 senior staffer has moved onto Dekalb County, Georgia with Dr. Horton.

From the last MIRACLES Report

This time, it is Sarita Smith, an native Evanstonian who ran the student assignment process for the District. The District provided me with the quote below.

Over the past four years, Sarita has made an indelible mark in the District 65 history books streamlining our student registration process and leading the district’s first community-driven process to review boundaries and develop a new student assignment plan in nearly 30 years. This includes the return of a new school to Evanston’s Fifth Ward community.

We are deeply grateful for her work and wish her nothing but the best in the next chapter of her professional career. Our leadership team is working closely with her to develop a plan that ensures a smooth transition of the important work she currently leads on behalf of our district as well as to ensure continuity for families as part of the ongoing student registration process.

This marks the sixth person I am aware of who has followed Dr. Horton to Georgia in senior leadership positions.

• Markisha Mitchell, who was Dr. Horton’s Chief of Staff but technically had the job title, Special Assistant to the Cabinet

• Elijah Palmer, who was a Dean of Culture and Climate with D65 and goes way back with Dr. Horton to their AUSL days.

• Dr Kendrick Johnson, who owns Frontier Educational Consulting and awarded a $367,555 contract in DeKalb to build out the teacher residency program. He worked with Dr. Horton in Evanston, East St. Louis and now, DeKalb. He also worked with Dr. Horton in AUSL.

• Antonio Ross, a former business partner of Dr. Horton was set to be hired but had an offer rescinded after reporting from this blog.

• Michelle Dillard, who worked with Dr. Horton in Louisville is now the Chief of Schools in Dekalb.

And per my comment on the Roundtable, this is another person associated with the new school leaving, perhaps a bad omen. This is especially concerning, since she was one of the most vocal proponents of the new school, even writing a letter to the ISBE to recommend the D65 finance team for an ISBE award.

Either way, I wish her the best in her new role. She was certainly put in a tough position here in Evanston between a Superintendent who knew of the $20m+ cost increases as far back as May 2022¹ and a Board that didn’t know until October 2023.

The one group that definitely will be sticking around is Cordigan-Clark, the architects, where the money continues to flow. According to my records, they were were paid $3,241,787.68 in Q4 2023 (October to December 2023).

• 10/30/2023 $1,543,600.01

• 12/7/2023 $1,331,535.66

• 12/22/2023 $366,652.01

Speaking of .. my readers may be not surprised to learn that Dr. Horton has imported the entire MIRACLES thing down to DeKalb. Given how much the taxpayers of Evanston invested in MIRACLES intellectual property, I feel like we should be getting a royalty check on this or something, maybe we can use it to offset all these architectural bills.²

1. Recall that according to Dr. Turner’s memo, the administration was aware of increases as far back as April 2022, before they even took the money!

2. I am only half joking here. Like, Evanston invested a lot of money into the MIRACLES intellectual property and in theory, this is intellectual property owned by Evanston taxpayers. My understanding is that they even made MIRACLES varsity jackets! Why is the superintendent permitted to just take this stuff to another District with disregard? I understand this is the public sector, but this just seems wild to me. I can’t imagine doing work at one job and then just taking it with me to the next one like this.