The Terms of Dr. Turner's Separation Agreement with District 65
She will receive a $191,000 lump sum and leave June 30, a year before her contract was set to end.
Yesterday the District 65 Board parted ways with Superintendent Dr. Angel Turner and named former ETHS chief Dr. Eric Witherspoon as interim. The vote was 5 to 1, with board member Andrew Wymer opposed. The Board said her separation terms would follow. The signed agreement is now public, and the RoundTable has written it up.
Dr. Turner will get a lump sum of $191,000, plus about $7,500 for unused vacation, and keeps her District phone and laptop. Her last day is June 30, a full year before her contract was set to expire in 2027.
The number is not arbitrary. The agreement explains that it roughly equals what the District would have owed Dr. Turner if it had used the buyout clause already written into her contract: about 20 weeks of salary and benefits, plus the salary and benefits she would have earned during a 90-day notice period before termination.
That buyout clause is Section 11.C of her original contract, which lets the Board end a superintendent's contract early without claiming she did anything wrong.
The Board may, at its option, and by a minimum of ninety (90) days' notice to the Superintendent, unilaterally terminate this contract during its term without cause effective no earlier than June 30, 2025. In the event of such termination, the Board shall pay to the Superintendent as liquidated damages for breach of contract, the lesser of (i) the maximum amount permitted to be paid under the Illinois Government Severance Pay Act or (ii) the present value of the annual base salary the Superintendent would have earned under this Agreement from the actual date of termination to the termination date set forth in this Agreement.
Dr. Turner still had a full year left on her contract, worth more than $324,000 in salary and benefits. Because that is far more than the law's 20-week cap, the cap is the smaller of the two figures the clause points to, and it sets the severance. Add the roughly three months of salary she would have collected during the notice period, and the total lands near the $191,000 figure.
Neither side will sue the other, the Board won't challenge her unemployment claim, and it will write her a recommendation letter. The Board's promise not to come after her later includes a carve-out for things it hasn't already discovered:
This release does not apply to claims of material fraud, theft, or intentional misappropriation of public funds by the Superintendent that are not known to the Board or discoverable by the Board through the exercise of reasonable diligence prior to the Board's execution of this Agreement. The Board represents that it is not aware of any such claims of material fraud, theft, or intentional misappropriation of public funds by the Superintendent as of its execution of this Agreement.
The agreement adds that the Board is not aware of any such claims.
The closest precedent comes from District 65's recent past. In 2013, the district paid former superintendent Hardy Murphy a $175,000 severance when he had two years left on his contract, worth more than $600,000 in salary and benefits. The board's minutes record that the timing was "mutually agreed upon" and that the board considered the payment "fair and fiscally responsible."
The only other local superintendent buyout I’m aware of is a 2015 agreement from Niles Township High School District 219, and it's a very different animal. That superintendent, Dr. Nanciann Gatta Pérez, got no lump sum at all. She had already been put on leave pending an investigation and had sued the district, and her deal mostly paid out her remaining salary and vacation through a resignation a few weeks later in exchange for dropping the lawsuits. The fine print in both is nearly identical, though: a broad waiver of claims, non-disparagement on both sides, and no admission that anyone did anything wrong.