It’s really hard to understand how we got to this point. The board completely failed in their fiduciary responsibility over and over but moving forward with this project after it became abundantly clear it was not only risky, did nothing to improve future educational outcomes and cherry on top - added millions per year more to expenses that it can not pay for - this should be criminal.
The lies that Horton and at least one Board member used in 2022 to justify the lease certificate, I would argue is a classic case of securities fraud. Horton especially received a great deal of personal benefit from obtaining this financial instrument by any means necessary - a job paying him $100k more a year, a pay raise from the Board, etc.
That bus savings number magically going from $2 million to $3 million from August 2021 to January 2022, while there were no underlying changes is such a doozy. There are records I've tried to obtain in order to prove this but they've been denied as "predecisional"
True but the board knew all this AND that they had no room in the budget to pay for the lease certs and still pressed go. That is beyond incomprehensible and has really made me wonder how financial controls could be this loose.
Let’s assume there is fraud here. What is the process for involving regulators or law enforcement? I don’t think that should be off the table just for the principle. There ought to be repercussions.
Most of the public corruption units in IL are pretty feckless. I've seen letters that folks have written to the Evanston PD, the County Sheriff, the State's Prosecutor, and the IL State Police Corruption Unit. I haven't seen any indication they've investigated or anything.
I think the best bet is the Dept of Education Office of Inspector General, but who the hell knows if they'll even be around on January 22nd.
Ideologue - 1) ‘an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.’ 2) ‘an ideologue is someone who has very strong beliefs or opinions and stubbornly sticks to them no matter what. An ideologue will insist they’re right even when evidence suggests they might be wrong.’
Thanks Ed - yes I am suggesting that having a board of ‘ultra-progressive’ ideologues is how we got here, and that is what I am suggesting is the underlying problem behind the current financial woes.
Religiosity is not rational and cannot be contested with rational logic and argument* - that is essentially what we are dealing with here with the belief system of this board of Elect individuals who are ready to ignore the financial consultant’s advice and build until the state tells them to stop, maybe because they cannot face the reality of what calamity they have brought the district to.
*Arguments such as that real Equity would be better served by instead spending limited funding on increased core, but boring fundamentals like more reading and math support for under-performers rather than instead spending the limited funding on new buildings that have symbolic meaning more than actual practical need within the district, at least when measured against all the other acute needs arguably serving the same Equity goal.
I totally agree JE…we are in this position for lots of reasons but the ideological focus on an ‘equality of outcomes’ in the firm of ‘equity’ is the main reason imo. Unfortunately educated, liberal minded people (that we have are lucky to have a preponderance of in Evanston) are particularly susceptible to fooling themselves until its too late…
I understand that the lease certificate funds can’t be used for another purpose, but they represent D65 borrowing capacity (ie debt) that could have been leveraged for another purpose by another means and in any case will have to be repaid with real dollars. It’s not like this is a gift that we can only use for one thing and it’s “use it or lose it”. They are positioning it that way to say that we are pot-committed to the new school.
They were pot committed when they borrowed $40M without having a budget or plans in hand and without having verified that there was in fact $3.25 million in transportation savings to pay for it. Short term result is that the pain of all that much worse. Long term result is that there will be an entire generation of kids in D65 who will have $ 3.25 million less in resources available to them as we pay for Foster School out of operating funds.
Only the pot committed would think this is a good idea.
With 4 new board members coming in April, it is really a shame that this decision is not being postponed until they are in place. I hope that some of the candidates are at the board meeting and say the decision should be postponed. That would get my vote.
"Should" is the operative word. Majority of current board don't apply the same logic of "should/shouldn't" as many would. Postponing the vote on this also pushes back construction/school opening by at least a year and gives the next board an easier shot at terminating the project entirely.
I know the headline was intentionally attention-grabbing, but it's not like this $23M batch of bids just showed up out of nowhere and wasn't part of the overall Foster picture two months ago when they "considered" a pause. What new information would change the tune of any of this conversation?
So we could have paid a fee (according to Roundtable), and not set the district on a path of financial toilet flushing (for every taxpayer in the community, a community that actually voted to not build this back in 2012 I believe).
I support the school, but not at the expense of setting up punishing other students/schools in the district. D65 just can't admit that they decided to build this school based on lies and deceit (i.e Horton and anybody existing at the district who knew ANY of this before votes were ever taken)...they bury it under the extremely overused term of "equity." Equity is not about punishing all for the benefits of the few. At least one school community has officially been destroyed (Bessie). At least two more school communities, I am guessing from even basic arithmetic that eludes D65 admin/board members, will be destroyed. All to build a shrunken school, no longer remotely state-of-the-art (as originally promised)..with a shrunken gym ceiling...oh the GLORIOUSNESS!
I was at one of the talk and learn things about the budget where Dr Turner made a statement that they have to go forward with building the school because the lease certs can only be used for construction (whatever she said exactly was quoted in a Roundtable article.) I still can’t get my head around this argument, especially when the lease certs won’t cover the full cost of the building. If anyone understands this argument, feel free to enlighten me.
I get that it can only be used for new construction but I don’t understand the argument of “we took out this loan, which actually won’t cover the whole amount anyway, and now we must proceed because we can’t use the loan for anything else even though we don’t know how to pay for the part not covered by the loan and we have to start paying the loan back soon and don’t actually have money for that either.” That’s the part I don’t understand.
So that whole program was added and paid for with the ESSER funding from COVID relief money. I am sure it provides some value, but if theres no funding 🤷
I have a friend (former teacher and assistant principal (not D65)) who really wanted to help kids regain lost ground after the pandemic. She applied to be one of these tutors at D65. She described it as four days a week sitting in a room doing absolutely nothing while the kids she was tutoring "learned" on their iPads. That left just one day a week for actual interaction with the kids. Several times she brought up various ideas for engagement to the person running the program but was utterly and completely shut down. One can only hope the program was run differently at other schools. Anyhow, my friend just couldn't take sitting idly by while the kids stared at their screens and she quit after about a month.
It’s really hard to understand how we got to this point. The board completely failed in their fiduciary responsibility over and over but moving forward with this project after it became abundantly clear it was not only risky, did nothing to improve future educational outcomes and cherry on top - added millions per year more to expenses that it can not pay for - this should be criminal.
The lies that Horton and at least one Board member used in 2022 to justify the lease certificate, I would argue is a classic case of securities fraud. Horton especially received a great deal of personal benefit from obtaining this financial instrument by any means necessary - a job paying him $100k more a year, a pay raise from the Board, etc.
https://www.foiagras.com/p/is-this-securities-fraud
That bus savings number magically going from $2 million to $3 million from August 2021 to January 2022, while there were no underlying changes is such a doozy. There are records I've tried to obtain in order to prove this but they've been denied as "predecisional"
True but the board knew all this AND that they had no room in the budget to pay for the lease certs and still pressed go. That is beyond incomprehensible and has really made me wonder how financial controls could be this loose.
Let’s assume there is fraud here. What is the process for involving regulators or law enforcement? I don’t think that should be off the table just for the principle. There ought to be repercussions.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lots of folks have complained to various levels of regulators and law enforcement and it hasn't done much.
Really? Which regulators or enforcement agencies? I never heard anything about these reports. Seems like an agency would be obligated to investigate?
Most of the public corruption units in IL are pretty feckless. I've seen letters that folks have written to the Evanston PD, the County Sheriff, the State's Prosecutor, and the IL State Police Corruption Unit. I haven't seen any indication they've investigated or anything.
I think the best bet is the Dept of Education Office of Inspector General, but who the hell knows if they'll even be around on January 22nd.
Tom:
Who is the BOD member you are referring too ?
Ideologue - 1) ‘an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.’ 2) ‘an ideologue is someone who has very strong beliefs or opinions and stubbornly sticks to them no matter what. An ideologue will insist they’re right even when evidence suggests they might be wrong.’
?????? what does this have to do with anything ?????
Sounds like an explanation for how we got to this point (per Angela's question), referring to Horton and/or the board.
Oh I see 👍 - Sorry there have been a lot of trolls/bots on Substack lately so I'm jumpy over here
Thanks Ed - yes I am suggesting that having a board of ‘ultra-progressive’ ideologues is how we got here, and that is what I am suggesting is the underlying problem behind the current financial woes.
Religiosity is not rational and cannot be contested with rational logic and argument* - that is essentially what we are dealing with here with the belief system of this board of Elect individuals who are ready to ignore the financial consultant’s advice and build until the state tells them to stop, maybe because they cannot face the reality of what calamity they have brought the district to.
*Arguments such as that real Equity would be better served by instead spending limited funding on increased core, but boring fundamentals like more reading and math support for under-performers rather than instead spending the limited funding on new buildings that have symbolic meaning more than actual practical need within the district, at least when measured against all the other acute needs arguably serving the same Equity goal.
I totally agree JE…we are in this position for lots of reasons but the ideological focus on an ‘equality of outcomes’ in the firm of ‘equity’ is the main reason imo. Unfortunately educated, liberal minded people (that we have are lucky to have a preponderance of in Evanston) are particularly susceptible to fooling themselves until its too late…
I understand that the lease certificate funds can’t be used for another purpose, but they represent D65 borrowing capacity (ie debt) that could have been leveraged for another purpose by another means and in any case will have to be repaid with real dollars. It’s not like this is a gift that we can only use for one thing and it’s “use it or lose it”. They are positioning it that way to say that we are pot-committed to the new school.
They were pot committed when they borrowed $40M without having a budget or plans in hand and without having verified that there was in fact $3.25 million in transportation savings to pay for it. Short term result is that the pain of all that much worse. Long term result is that there will be an entire generation of kids in D65 who will have $ 3.25 million less in resources available to them as we pay for Foster School out of operating funds.
Only the pot committed would think this is a good idea.
Sometimes you get dealt an 8❤️ and 4♠️ and you're just like "fuck it, lets give it a shot, I'll raise you $40 million"
With 4 new board members coming in April, it is really a shame that this decision is not being postponed until they are in place. I hope that some of the candidates are at the board meeting and say the decision should be postponed. That would get my vote.
"Should" is the operative word. Majority of current board don't apply the same logic of "should/shouldn't" as many would. Postponing the vote on this also pushes back construction/school opening by at least a year and gives the next board an easier shot at terminating the project entirely.
I know the headline was intentionally attention-grabbing, but it's not like this $23M batch of bids just showed up out of nowhere and wasn't part of the overall Foster picture two months ago when they "considered" a pause. What new information would change the tune of any of this conversation?
Sorry guys - nobody reads anything unless I give it an attention grabbing headline. It's the cost of doing business!
Idiots.
So we could have paid a fee (according to Roundtable), and not set the district on a path of financial toilet flushing (for every taxpayer in the community, a community that actually voted to not build this back in 2012 I believe).
I support the school, but not at the expense of setting up punishing other students/schools in the district. D65 just can't admit that they decided to build this school based on lies and deceit (i.e Horton and anybody existing at the district who knew ANY of this before votes were ever taken)...they bury it under the extremely overused term of "equity." Equity is not about punishing all for the benefits of the few. At least one school community has officially been destroyed (Bessie). At least two more school communities, I am guessing from even basic arithmetic that eludes D65 admin/board members, will be destroyed. All to build a shrunken school, no longer remotely state-of-the-art (as originally promised)..with a shrunken gym ceiling...oh the GLORIOUSNESS!
I was at one of the talk and learn things about the budget where Dr Turner made a statement that they have to go forward with building the school because the lease certs can only be used for construction (whatever she said exactly was quoted in a Roundtable article.) I still can’t get my head around this argument, especially when the lease certs won’t cover the full cost of the building. If anyone understands this argument, feel free to enlighten me.
She was just saying that they can’t use it for other buildings or other things
I get that it can only be used for new construction but I don’t understand the argument of “we took out this loan, which actually won’t cover the whole amount anyway, and now we must proceed because we can’t use the loan for anything else even though we don’t know how to pay for the part not covered by the loan and we have to start paying the loan back soon and don’t actually have money for that either.” That’s the part I don’t understand.
If only someone would file an injunction.
Tom, I’d like to get your take on the board decision to get rid of tutoring.
I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever program they implemented is crap along with the execution.
But it seems like a problematic place to balance the budget if you are truly using an “equity lens.”
https://evanstonnow.com/from-touted-to-doubted/
So that whole program was added and paid for with the ESSER funding from COVID relief money. I am sure it provides some value, but if theres no funding 🤷
I have a friend (former teacher and assistant principal (not D65)) who really wanted to help kids regain lost ground after the pandemic. She applied to be one of these tutors at D65. She described it as four days a week sitting in a room doing absolutely nothing while the kids she was tutoring "learned" on their iPads. That left just one day a week for actual interaction with the kids. Several times she brought up various ideas for engagement to the person running the program but was utterly and completely shut down. One can only hope the program was run differently at other schools. Anyhow, my friend just couldn't take sitting idly by while the kids stared at their screens and she quit after about a month.
This will bankrupt the district
Get out of here Chamath. I didn't like you when we worked together at facebook and I don't like you now.
Maybe D65 will SPAC?
Hah under Trump 2.0 any kind of financial fraud will be legalized so whatever!