Spring Break is Over: What you Missed in Evanston School District News

And I file a complaint to the Illinois Attorney General about a D65 OMA violation

Welcome back from Spring Break! Hopefully everyone had a good time downing margaritas in Cabo.

Right before Spring Break, the District 65 School Board held two different meetings - the meeting on 3/18/2024 approving the new superintendent contract and a 3pm Friday meeting on 3/22/2024 where they voted to “honorably” terminate the District’s sustainability role.¹ Jammed into both meetings were resolutions dismissing or not renewing contracts for teachers and administrators.

3/18/24 Agenda

Again, the District opted to omit these documents from the public until after they’d already voted on them. I obtained copies via FOIA last week and you can view the resolutions at this link. I’ve redacted some of the signatures and removed a performance review for one of the contracts not renewed.

I’ve organized the list into a spreadsheet to track positions and salaries not renewed. Below is the list with names redacted, you can see the non-redacted list at this link.² One of the roles (Compliance Coordinator) has now gone full circle on this blog, I initially wrote about it when they listed the role. Notably terminated was the Director of Technology, who had been with the District more than 20 years and a Data Analyst who crunched the numbers with Assessment Data.

The Unknown Administrative Positions make <$75k and the salary is not public information

My understanding is that this is a mix of folks terminated for cause and positions that were eliminated, such as the sustainability role which is currently being “re-imagined”. I don’t really have a good sense of which is which. I am also of the understanding that this is not a complete list and there are likely more non-renewals coming in the April meeting.

Residency Requirement Suspended & Open Meetings Act Complaint

On March 25, I wrote about how District 65 suspended the residency requirement for the new Superintendent. Instead of changing policy (which they did for other things in March 18th meeting) they chose to temporarily suspend the policy directly in the employment contract of Dr. Turner. Read the full post for details.

I argue this is a violation of the Open Meetings Act, which requires that final actions and discussion of public matters be conducted in public. Even worse, I contend that using a legitimate exemption to the Open Meetings Act (salary and contract matters) to conduct public business (voting to suspend a board policy) is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the Open Meetings Act altogether.

If nothing else, it’s contrary to the spirit of transparency and good governance - the Board did conduct public discussions of the residency requirement back in May, but elected to vote on the change outside of public view and hide it in an addendum to the new Superintendent’s contract. Yet again, the Board will say they value transparency and good faith governance, but actions speak louder than words.

You can read my complaint to the Illinois Attorney General Public Access Counselor. The case has been assigned a number (2024 PAC 80761) and is under review by the AG’s office.

Off-Topic Recommendations

I don’t normally post other stuff to read on this blog but there were two pieces written during the last week that pertain to journalism, writing, and how we talk about facts and politics. I couldn’t help myself to promote them here:

• Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten wrote a lengthy piece about a debate and $100,000 bet over the lab leak vs zoonosis origins of COVID. I found myself absolutely captivated by the compelling arguments presented by both sides, and the discussion around using Bayesian reasoning as a mathematical tool to quantify uncertainty.³ I also left this feeling hopeful about the future of journalism, Substack, and fact-based scientific debate.

• Freddie Deboer write a piece about how he hates his comment section. I found this notable because I’ve moderated the comment section here in the same way that Freddie has moderated his. The problem is that bad faith actors show up and swamp meaningful discussion with poisoned cult-of-personality and culture wars garbage.

As always, feel free to comment or email me (tom@foiagras.com) with any additional information.

1. This language around “honorable” layoffs is so weird and dystopian. I understand that the intent is not to malign the person laid off but I can’t imagine it provides much comfort to the person being laid off and feels performative for the firer.

2. I’m not going to keep this list un-redacted forever, these are people with careers and families and it’s cruel to poison their name on google searches with the time they were laid off. But I do think at least for a couple months, it is public service.

3. In full disclosure, I’m a big time supporter of Bayesian reasoning, so much so that I have a Bayes’ Law tattoo