Horton Gets a Good Deal and Updates on the Superintendent Search

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool for me the 93rd time, shame on me.

Update 11:11am: I’ve obtained a copy of the letter from the District 65 Board to Dr. Horton. You can read it here. Most of the original findings are the same but the specific table of amounts due and paid has been updated to reflect new information.

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Evanston Roundtable beat me to the story on this one! The District 65 School Board let Dr. Horton mostly off-the-hook for defaulting on his repayment agreement. According to to the Roundtable story, the language of the letter is:¹

“You have failed to make one $700 payment and have been consistently late on nearly all your other payments,” board President Sergio Hernandez and Vice President Soo La Kim wrote in the letter, which the RoundTable obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. “You are currently in default and the District has the right to require the entire remaining amount immediately due and assess significant additional late penalties. This letter serves to disabuse you of any assumption that the District accepts your pattern of late payments.”

According to the Roundtable, the letter goes on;

As a last good faith gesture, the District is willing to assess for now a single month penalty” of $2,084

This is absolutely wild. According to the language of the contract, he owes late fees for all but one month he had payments due for. The math (to the best of my knowledge is below):

(Updated table)

He owes somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $14,000 in late fees, depending on how you do the math. But even that is moot because he is in default.

I’m having a hard time understanding whether the Board can actually do this. They executed this contract with Dr. Horton and both signed it. This money (the fees) belongs to the people of Evanston/Skokie, it’s not monopoly money the board gets to give away to their friend.² There is nothing in the agreement, that I can see, which gives the Board the authority to deviate in collection as they have.

Please leave a comment if you understand the legal landscape here better than I do.

Other Superintendent News

In other news, the District 65 Board is reaching the conclusion of their Superintendent replacement search. And just like last time, they’re doing it entirely in secret. The argument for doing it in secret is that you can attract candidates who currently have a job and don’t want to commit to leaving until they have another one. I don’t find this argument compelling. I believe the obligation to the public outweighs their obligation to Superintendent candidates.

I’ve had a lot of people email me to ask to write something about Dr. Angel Turner, who is the current Interim Superintendent and people believe is a candidate. I have no idea if she’s a candidate for the permanent job or not.

The folks at Evanston Now just published some good journalism on Dr. Turner’s past in the Chicago Public Schools.

• “Turner on Do Not Hire List” - Evanston Now

The Evanston Now story covers two stories:

• Dr. Turner’s entry on the Chicago Public Schools DNH (Do Not Hire) list.

• Dr. Turner (and her husband) allegedly filing false statements regarding free school lunches for their children.

Before we can talk about these, we have to talk about something called AUSL.

Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL)

I’ve written about AUSL before - you can read my story here. AUSL was a private organization which took over 31 schools in CPS as “turnaround schools.” In the process, they would fire all the teachers, replace them with new teachers (often entry level folks). The Chicago Teachers Union wrote an absolutely scathing piece about the “racist purges” that happened under AUSL’s watch and resulted in a Civil Rights lawsuit and settlement.

Our beloved Karen Lewis led the charge to fight these racist purges when she became president of our union in 2010. The following year, we filed suit in federal court against CPS for violating the civil rights of displaced Black educators.

Dr. Horton was Principal of an AUSL School (Wendell Phillips), this was the subject of his PhD dissertation. There are a handful of other senior administrators in District 65 who come from the AUSL program, including Dr. Turner.

According to Dr. Turner’s bio and her lawsuit, she was a principal at one of the flagship schools for three years and eventually the Director of School Leadership for AUSL.

The issue with the “do not hire” letter occurred when Dr. Turner was the Director of School Leadership for AUSL, which including overseeing Orr Academy High School. The scheme involved falsifying attendance records, and WBEZ wrote about the scheme:

Q: Tell us about the scheme at these four schools. Who was involved and how did they work?

There were basically two different schemes, and they were typically orchestrated by the principals and carried out by clerks or attendance coordinators. The basic idea was that individual teachers would mark a kid absent and then later in the day the clerks would “clean attendance,” which means they would change those unexcused absences to “present,” or some other function that basically said that the kids were there. 

Q: Why would a principal be motivated to do this?

A: There’s a few reasons. The first is that these four schools that the IG focused on are all struggling neighborhood high schools and they’re under tremendous pressure to improve. Their attendance ratings [and] their attendance rates factor into their school rankings, which are really important, and also principal evaluations. And the more kids you have in a building, the more money you get. So there’s a lot of pressure. 

It’s unclear whether Dr. Turner knew of the schemes or to what degree she was aware. She sued the City to get off the list, claiming she was falsely accused and suggesting that DNH placement was racially motivated.

I don’t really know how to interpret the story - clearly she certainly appears to have a been in a position of authority over the schools participating in the scheme, but to what degree she was aware seems unclear. AUSL was allegedly notorious for having a freewheeling administrative culture. Consider, Jarvis Sanford, the former head of AUSL who was later terminated as a consultant from Elmhurst District 205 for allegedly “abusing a number of administrators over time.”

District 65 Employs Dr. Turner’s Sister

According to records, District 65 employs a Manager of Guest Staffing, a position which, I can’t find records to suggest existed prior to 2022. According to compensation records, in 2023 this role paid a salary of $104,956.19 and in 2024: $114,842.89 (a 10% raise). This role is currently occupied by an individual who I believe is Dr. Turner’s sister.³

I reached out to the District regarding this and below is their statement

Yes, we can confirm that Ms. Bias is related to Dr. Turner. She supports our temporary staffing services and was hired by the previous human resources leadership team nearly two years ago and well prior to Dr. Turner being named Interim Superintendent. Ms. Bias has a background in education and oversaw hiring in her previous role.

Dr. Turner had no involvement in the hiring process and Ms. Bias is currently under the direct supervision of the Executive Chief of Human Resources.

1. I don’t have a copy of the letter yet, I will share it when I do!

2. Dr. Horton is making $320,000/year as the Superintendent in DeKalb County

3. The source of this information is an obituary: https://www.schafferfuneralservice.com/obituary/Lester-Walker