Whitewash in Huntley School District 158?

Where’s the electric cord? Where’s the videotape of the sparks flying ? Where’s the photographs of the missing cord?

Board majority members and administrators got rather testy Thursday evening when their attempt to produce a whitewash report purporting to show the details of an incident in which a bus driver was electrically shocked ran into questioning from board member Larry Snow.

Administrators and the board majority’s trick of circling the wagons and not informing the entire board blew up in open session when Doug Renkosik, Director of Buildings and Grounds stared at Superintendent John Burkey and sat silent not answering the question of

“Was the equipment / connector modified by one of our employees after the incident?“

The political ploy of issuing a public statement so it can be said a detailed report was discussed in open session didn’t work too well.

The school board majority resorted to shouting down Snow with Kevin Gentry yelling at Snow to

“Stop!”

When Gentry began yelling at Snow, Snow was matter of factly answering a question that Superintendent Burkey asked him.

So much for Snow’s politely answering a question in open session.

At the last meeting, District 158 administrators dismissively rejected that anything wrong happened in the bus yard. It was only rumors about the bus driver incident.

Tereasa Ferrier, a fiscal office administrator, told the Financial Advisory Committee at its last meeting that she didn’t hear any ambulances pull up to the administration building to transport anyone to a hospital.

That’s clever disinformation.

The driver’s daughter works for the District and drove her mother to the hospital.

After Thursday’s meeting Snow said,

“Our employees deserve a safe work environment and the respect that evidence of what really happened won’t be tampered with and disappear after an incident.

“If the reports are true, it’s ridiculous that an administrator called an emergency meeting of the bus drivers two weeks after an accident and stood up in front of them and blamed another manager.

“After the blame game is played in front our employees, now our Superintendent and board majority don’t want the real facts to come out.”

McHenry County Blog asked Snow what was some of the information or questions that he had:

“I want to know if an email was sent showing that a manager was told there was a problem with the GFI breakers well ahead of time and whether this information was discussed with the chain of command with nothing being done about fixing a potentially unsafe working condition.”

“How can a forensic engineer or the Department of Labor inspect the cord if it has now disappeared?”

“Photographs were apparently taken of the now missing cord, so where are they?”

“There was a videotape camera on the parking lot at the time of the incident so where’s the videotape evidence of the incident?”

“Did we respond to the seriousness of the incident by waiting a week to purchase a GFI tester that costs about $30?”

“If the District didn’t own a GFI tester then what was used to test the circuit breaker on the day of the accident, as is claimed in the report?”

Snow went on to say,

“Imagine the coincidence of physical evidence, videotape, photographs and possibly even email all having either disappeared or now not existing.”


Comments

Whitewash in Huntley School District 158? — 2 Comments

  1. Is this related to why operations chief has not been at work?rumors that he is suspended?vacation?missing?for over two weeks?worwopay?seems like tempers might be short re talkign something that nobody wants to talk about
    what is the real story?

  2. Talking of such negative things in District 158 is not good for the children! Can we just paint this whole thing in a more positive light? Lets just say that nothing happened, and hide all evidence of the district’s wrong doing. It is FOR THE CHILDREN!

    Why is it that no one seems to see this pattern of hiding the evidence? Sounds a lot like a certain closed session where all the cameras and recorders failed. Whoops! I forgot. We cannot see a pattern of wrong doing, because we are thinking about the CHILDREN!

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