McHenry County Blog

This week I finally put together something I learned from former Harlem School District 122 board member Gloria Maloney in late 2006.

Maloney was on a fractured school board.

The reason for the fracture was her insistent questioning about things she thought were wrong. I could lay them out, but, let me just give you a taste. A check was sent to a supposed vendor with an address in an empty Rockford building. Mahoney went to court without an attorney to prevent the board from destroying financial records and won.

She also blew the whistle on the school “board’s decision in closed session to grant a convicted sex offender the right to attend a school function” at Machesney Park-based district. The person in question was the “the wife of a former board member,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maloney also refused to go along with psychological testing of school board members and union negotiators before contract talks.

Needless to say, the 6-member ruling bloc and their supporters really wanted to get rid of her to end her continuing public questioning of matters which the majority did not want to see the light of day.

Remind you of any local school district?

Say, Huntley?

Mahoney told me that they that her board had hired a business manager who had quit shortly after being hired to go to work for Rock Valley College.

It turns out this person was Stacie Talbert, the Comptroller for Huntley School District 158, who just quit to go work for the Rockford Park District.

Her public reason for leaving had something to do with the contentiousness of the Huntley School Board.

But, having worked for the badly split Harlem School District, surely Talbert must have been aware of what might be going on in Huntley before she was hired.

The November 14, 2005, minutes of the Harlem school board tell of Talbert’s introduction at a school board meeting as the new business manager/ treasurer.

She resigns, effective December 9, 2005.

Reason? “Personal.”

Less than a month on the job…including Thanksgiving vacation.

Whatever she found was obviously not to her liking.

An internet search has Talbert ending up as Director of Financial Services for Rock Valley College. In that capacity, she moderated a panel at a Montreal Government Finance Officers Association conference on May 10, 2006. It appears she worked for Rock Valley College in 2002-2003, too.

So, the Huntley School District was not Talbert’s first experience with a school district whose board sharply disagreed.

I typed “Stacie Talbert” and “school” into Google’s search engine and found a Harlem School District reference listed as number 31.

I wonder if Talbert’s brief employment at the Harlem School District showed up on her resume. I wonder what a reference letter from Harlem would say.

But, most of all, I wonder what she found that caused her to leave so soon.

Given her devastating critique (long version; short version) of the Huntley School District’s internal controls, I’ll bet it was a doozy.

The majority bloc on the Harlem School Board defeated Gloria Maloney for re-election last spring after an incredible amount of abuse on Rockford Register-Star’s message board.

I am certain that the board meetings are quieter, but I doubt the public is well served by her absence.