McHenry County Blog

The Huntley School District 158 Board room was packed Thursday at 7 PM.

The only two empty seats were that of Board President Shawn Green and board member Kim Skaja. Skaja showed up after missing the academic spotlight and almost all of the parents’ public comments.  Green was absent, having told me that he would participate by phone if the special education agenda item were to be considered.

The parents’ advisory committee meeting on special ed had started at 6. It received record attendance. (Seen above are some of those who attended the July 14th meeting of the same committee.)

Many special ed teachers were in attendance.

At issue were staffing recommendations that has caseloads close to the legal maximum limit, for example, for speech pathologists in five schools.

The plan proposed by the administration for formal adoption has the burden being placed on individual teachers to prove they have too large of a caseload before adequate staffing is considered to meet the needs of the children.

“Prove it! with you doing all of the work” is apparently Human Resources Chief Lauren Smith’s new idea of working together and “collaborating” with the teachers.

The first item discussed by Special Ed Director Cheryl Kalkirtz was her suggestion to not have a December 10th parents advisory committee meeting.

She asked for a show of hands of those favoring not having the meeting.

The only hands raised were the administrators’.

When then asked how many wanted to have the meeting, a roomful of hands went up.

The attempt to gain approval to cancel the meeting at which the Federal stimulus ARRA IDEA spending would be discussed with parents failed. Apparently, their kids education was considered more important than Christmas parties.

One parent in 158, who is a special ed teacher in another district, made this point about the reading programs proposed to be financed with Federal funds:

“What are we doing to make sure it’s being implemented properly?”

When Kalkirtz seemed to try to brush off the point, wanting to move onto a different topic, a Special Ed Mom from the back of the room spoke up:

“I don’t think you heard what she was saying!”

It was fairly obvious from comments made by some of the teachers that this may have been the only time all of these teachers were in a room and asked or allowed to voice their opinions and ask questions about how the $1.6 million dollars should be spent.

It certainly did not appear that administrators had asked the teachers for their input on the revised list of expenditures.

Strange that teachers may have to attend public meetings if they want to “collaborate” with administrators on a group basis. Wouldn’t you think that would be included in the union contract?

Parents learned that, contrary to what Supt. John Burkey said at the previous board meeting, 60 Read 180 licenses had already been purchased for Heineman school. (When Burkey challenged a Special Ed Mom to file a Freedom of Information request on the topic the Thursday before last, I did. I’ll let you know when I get the response.)

The Moms knew this because, apparently as part of class time, a special ed student was assigned to unpack the boxes which were stacked up in a special ed room.

In addition, a special ed student received the Read 180 materials to take home so the parents could see what was going to be used for that student.

More tomorrow.

Huntley School District 158 Special Ed Moms poured in on during the public comment time before the school board Committee of the Whole meeting Thursday night.

By the time that part of the meeting was over at 11:15, there was no clear consensus among board members to approve the plan as presented. More detail was requested.

The Moms probably weren’t just irritated that the meeting started forty-five minutes late as a result of the board’s decision to expel a student for unspecified reasons.

They had done their homework, made possible by the school board’s having posted its board packet on the internet.

One after another they attacked various parts of the plan to spend Federal Stimulus money coming to help children with special needs.

There was a complaint that the gathering of information from staff and parents was inadequately promoted

One Mom took on the use of $80,000 for what seemed to be routine furniture purchases.

Another attacked Read 180:

“We don’t know this program will work for our kids.”

Taking up 43% of the $830,000 to be spent this year, “We don’t have any studies showing it will work on special needs students.”

Concerning staff development:

“I’m not really seeing that here.”

“It’s very tech heavy.”

“There are a lot of items that are very questionable.”

There was a toilet seat included.

“If we need that, we need that.”

In other words, why wait for Federal money to buy it?

“I don’t think the messages from the town hall came through on this list.”

More tomorrow.

Without first informing the school board or parents, the Huntley School District has filed a plan with the Special Education District of McHenry County (SEDOM) outlining how Federal Stimulus money will be spent under the Individual Development Education Act (IDEA).

You remember that the administration recommended spending only half of the $1.6 million on what most people would consider special ed purposes.

The board, with administrators present, spent two nights getting input from parents.

I detected sincerity from Board President Shawn Green when he spoke of his concerns about that diversion of money from special ed kids.

Now, without board approval–at least in an open meeting–and with an unfilled promise for a parental survey (see below for what is contained on the bottom of minutes below; click to enlarge the image), a plan for how to spend the Federal funds has been filed in Woodstock.

ARRA Funds

• A survey was passed out to attendees and will also be on the district website. Staff and parents will have the opportunity to complete the survey online. Datesto be determined.
• Outcome of the survey should be ready for the October School Board meeting.

Supt. John Burkey had District 158 file a plan with SEDOM to spend the IDEA ARRA (American Recovery Re-Investment Plan) stimulus funds without as much as telling parents about last Friday’s deadline.

It is hard to believe that school administrators didn’t knew about the deadline and would be telling parents a survey would be taken, tempting them to think they would have input on such a plan.

The district hired a new attorney, a specialist in Special Ed, who promptly told parents how trust is important.

Maybe the trust speech should have been shared more broadly.

There are so many questions

• Whose name is on the document?
• Is it Director of Special Services Cheryl Kalkirtz’?
• Was Kalkirtz following orders about what was in the submission, risking insubordination if she didn’t send in the document as instructed? Or was she the author and decision-maker behind its entire content?
• Whose idea was it to keep the plan and its submission deadline secret from the board and parents?

Board President Green assured parents they would have input into any plan.

Since the parents’ survey has not been completed, it would seem that parental input has gone by the wayside.

But, since the plan hasn’t been made public yet, who knows?  Maybe some of the verbal advice from the Special Ed Moms and Dads was followed.

Keeping key information from the public was a cornerstone of the referendum tax hike deception of 2004.

Five years later, it appears similar practices live under a new administration.

As a former government official, I can tell you that individuals act with impunity when they are certain there will be no potential negative consequences if they get caught.  (If you need a high profile example, think of Governor Rod Blagojevich before his arrest.)

It seems to me that the school board has been hung out to dry…assuming they have not been informed of the content of the report.

Certainly, if the board majority has approved what has been submitted in their names, special ed parents will wonder when and where that approval occurred.

Any approval out of public view would challenge the mandate of the Open Meetings Act.
 
So, let’s assume the Open Meetings Act was obeyed.

Who, then, has concocted this secret plan?

Will that person or persons be punished or rewarded?

There does seem to be some irony that Federal government officials can’t keep a military recommendation about the need for more troops for Afghanistan a secret, yet Huntley’s school administration thinks it can keep a spending plan secret from residents until after going through the motions of taking a survey.

It will be interesting to see to school administrators explain the getting of input after, instead of before the plan was sent to SEDOM.

It will also be interesting to see whether newspapers’ editorial staffs give District 158 a pass, not to mention how reporters will cover the story.

As of 9:30 this morning–the day of the board meeting–Huntley School District 158’s board packet information is not online.

One could guess that Superintendent John Burkey doesn’t want to disclose information ahead of time to Special Ed parents interested in how the Federal IDEA Special Ed money will be spent, but that would just be a guess.

If that is the major decision to be made tonight, the Special Ed parents aren’t going to be allowed to read the information ahead of time to decide if they should plan on attending the meeting.

This is certainly a step back toward opaqueness from a road of transparency that even included releasing union contract details during negotiations–something that may have occurred nowhere else in Illinois and I’d give odds won’t happen again in District 158.

This is probably not quite on point, but one could easily note that President Barack Obama is not exactly releasing the details of proposed health care legislation, but was telling Congress to hurry up and vote for it.

Residents are deprived of the right to publicly comment before any board decision is made when, as a practical matter, they are prevented from reading inches of board papers until only hours before the meeting.

When you click on this link for the board packet all you get is

“The page cannot be found”

= = = = =
Miracle of miracles, the link now works!
= = = = =
You can have a new top financial person in Huntley, but posting financial information ahead of time so people can read it must not be in his concept of “disclosure.”

Maybe you’ll read it here first. Increases in money to local school districts have been decided.

The information is online at the State Board of Education’s web site.

Begin the gnashing of teeth.

Or will it be sighs of relief?

Some school superintendents preferred to pretend the $160 increase per student was going to be zero.

Result?

Outlook “bleak.”

When you pretend it’s zero then you can publicly say the outlook is “bleak.”

I was at a meeting last week where the special ed parents weren’t buying into Huntley Supt. John Burkey’s desire to appropriate $800,000 of IDEA (special ed) federal stimulus funds to balance his proposed budget.

By my quick math, the foundation level increase is more than $1.25 million for Huntley School District 158.

This is a far cry from the “zero” that board members approved in the district’s preliminary budget.

And, this is not the first time a school district has predicated actions on no increase in state aid to education.

Remember the last District 300 referendum?

Now, the cat’s out of the bag.

The foundation level increase is $160 per student.

Unrealistic projections are just that.

There is nothing “fiscally conservative” about being purposely unrealistic.