McHenry County Blog

Karen Aylward is seen to the left of Stacy O'Deaon in this third in a series of pictures showing the shrinking Special Education Administrators in the Huntley School District found in the story linked to in the first paragraph of this article.

With Cheryl Kalkirtz no longer being Huntley School District 158’s  Director of Special Education, the question arises as to who is in charge.

After I asked if Karen Aylward had been appointed Interim Director, Community Relations Coordinator Lori Woods confirmed that she had been.

A relevant question might be whether Aylward is certified to hold the post.  If that interests you, then you might be interested in seeing the results of a public search on the Illinois State Board of Education’s web site below (click to enlarge):

The page showing Karen Aylward's educational certifications. Click to enlarge.

Aylward appears to have had her administrator certificate for over one year, but this public record doesn’t show any endorsement to be a Special Education Director.

Renee Erickson was one of the Assistant Special Ed Directors who left Huntley School District 158 at the end of last school year. (Three Special Ed administrators left at the end of the last school year.)  Erickson received her endorsement to be a Special Ed Director last June, as evidenced by what is on the ISBE’s web site. She now works for Palatine District 211, according to the State Board of Education web site.

Does anyone in Huntley District 158 have a Special Ed Director administrator endorsement?

If not, wouldn’t that strike you as unusual?

Apparently none of the four top administrators have a Special Education endorsement.  That’s what the Illinois State Board of Education web site indicates.

That would include

• Superintendent John Burkey
• Associate Superintendent Terry Awrey
• Chief Academic Officer Mary Olson
• Chief Human Resources Officer Lauren Smith

Controller Mark Altmayer is not listed on the educational certificate data base, although that doesn’t seem terribly important. (I remember voting against the first bill—usually passed as a courtesy—that State Rep. Dick Mulcahey passed after his Watergate victory. In the middle of a recession, it required school business managers to have a master’s degree in education. It was obviously a teachers’ jobs’ bill, but what a waste. Financial talent was being laid off all over the place, but, state law forbid that anyone outside of the educational establishment be hired!)

Huntley had not posted a job opening for a Special Ed Director by Monday noon.

Special Ed Mom Sara Deifucci started this story at the Huntley School District Board meeting on November 5th.

She asked this intriguing question:

“Has the district already purchased anything that parents aren’t aware of? Have you already purchased Read 180 licenses?”

Superintendent John Burkey replied,

“No.”

“If I FOI it, (will I find something)?” Deifucci continued.

“Do your FOIA (short for Freedom of Information request),” he said.

I don’t know whether she followed through, but I filed one that night.

Here is the summarized contents of the reply (click to enlarge any image):

• Intervention Treatment Proposal for Heineman Middle School for Read 180 and System 44 Materials Purchase
• Request to Purchase Form to Scholastic Inc. in the amount of $57,295.20
• Purchase Order #58187 to Scholastic in the amount of $57,295.20 for 180 licenses, Teacher and Classroom Materials
• Scholastic Invoice #2833847 in the amount of $5,760.00
• Scholastic Invoice #2833071 in the amount of $51,168.22
• Check #065672 payable to Scholastic Inc. in the amount of $57,233.62

It appears from the backup material from Heineman that Scholastic made an offer for 30 Read 180 licenses and 30 System 44 licenses for $57,295.20 and someone was able to convince the vendor to allow District 158 to buy 60 licenses for Read 180 and none of System 44 for the same price.

The heading does not indicate the Read 180 license will be used for special ed kids. As you can see, it says,

“Intervention Treatment Proposal for Heineman Middle School – 60 Below Proficient Students”

The date on the request to purchase form signed by Chief Academnic Officer Mary M. Olson is 8-28-9.   On the purchase order, she writes, on 10-14-9, “OK to pay in full.”

On 8-31, Scholastic apparently received a $5,760 bill for what appears to be four Read 180 licenses.

Next in the FOI reply package was a bill for $51,168, apparently for Marlowe Middle School, according to the check stub. It identifies the $5,760 purchase and the $51,168 as coming from “ADA Block Curriculum materials.”

I note one line for $998 seems to be for college prep. At least that’s what “COLLE PP” seems to indicate.

So, what’s it all mean?

I asked District 47’s Community Relations Officer Lorie Woods for a reaction and here’s what she sent:

“The question was in reference to the use of ARRA or IDEA funds to purchase Read 180 licenses, materials, etc. The purchases for which you have copies of Purchase Orders, Invoices, etc. were for the pilot program at Heineman Middle School.  Those items were paid for through the ADA (Average Daily Attendance) Grant.”

Yesterday, the first half of a report was published on what happened on the special ed front at the parents advisory committee meeting and the subsequent school board meeting. What follows, concludes that report.

Board member Aileen Seedorf questioned a disbursement to Scholastic Inc. for over fifty thousand dollars in the financial records. Scholastic provides Read 180.

Controller Mark Altmayer didn’t give it up and said he didn’t know.

With some persistence, other administrators fessed up and the cat was out of the bag.

Finally, Supt. Burkey confessed, saying 60 licenses had been purchased.

Curriculum director Mary Olsen said all of these licenses were to be used only for regular education students.

Tough to figure out how no licenses had been purchased a week earlier but we’ll wait for the response to the Freedom of Information request. And, if it’s unsatisfactory, I’ll file it again after January 1st when there will be actual penalties for those responding falsely.

One could still wonder why the Read 180 purchases were in a special ed classroom unpacked by a special ed student and given to a special ed student to take home to his parents.

Apparently at least one special ed student had been using the Read 180 program when none had been purchased for their use.

What the special ed parents asked for at the board meeting was

• Being able to make a presentation to the board on caseload staffing
• Parent participation on the committee coming up with revised ARRA funds spending recommendations

Seedorf tried to get the board and Burkey to agree to schedule a presentation by the parents at the next committee of the whole meeting.

Burkey and the board majority turned cold shoulders to both suggestions.

How unreasonable are such requests, considering how the Special Ed Moms have been treated this fall?

They are very reasonable.

In order to get the superintendent and 158 administrators to listen one apparently has to go door-to-door passing out flyers.

The Daily Herald pointed out how Burkey had “stone ears” in its article and how the parents distributed flyers door-to-door in order to stop this vote and get a revised spending list.

The Northwest Herald observed of the newest revision of how District 158 intends to spend the $1.6 million (which happened after the flyers hit door knobs):

“And the initiative for additional staff development –such as the opportunity to be trained in disability awareness –increased to $450,000 total.”

Parents told the board there had been other items purchased besides Read 180 and there was an internal memo indicating such.

As you might expect, administrators asked for a copy of their own memo, rather than offer to provide the memo to the board with an explanation.

Perhaps the memo has to surface publicly before its existence is confirmed by the administration.

Sort of like how the Read 180 licenses and materials weren’t purchased this year until a special ed parent brought the materials to a board meeting for show and tell.

District 158 is among the model local governments in revealing what will be discussed at their meetings. (In comparison, Crystal Lake reveals nothing more than its agenda and, then, not on a convenient basis.)

But with how it obtained the Read 180 licenses, which it apparently wants to finance with Federal stimulus money and which educational value is clearly experimental for special ed kids, “transparency” apparently means,

“Show us evidence of what you suspect and we’ll admit that’s what it is.”

Thank goodness for observant parents.

And others.

Are higher salaries and larger benefits producing higher or lower student test scores?

Let’s look at Huntley, where scores were made public in last Thursday’s school board packet.

In Huntley School District 158, you will remember there was a teacher’s strike a year ago. This year Supt. John Burkey got a $12,000 raise and a trip to China to study education. (He refuses to reveal whether he was on vacation days or work days.)

Did about five percent raises for the teachers last year and this year improve learning in the classroom?

You can find a summary of the test score results in Mary Olson’s memo of September 23, 2009 to Supt. Burkey and Terry Awrey.

If you look at the test score results in her memo, an interesting thing pops out:

there is a decline in at least one subject tested in every grade tested.

The memo begins on electronic page 66 of 390 at this board packet link;

It clearly shows

• 3rd grade – reading and math, both post declines
• 4th grade – reading, math and science, all three post declines
• 5th grade – writing decline
• 6th grade – math decline
• 7th grade – reading decline
• 8th grade – writing decline
• 11th grade – math, science and writing, all three post declines

(The other grades went untested.)

That’s not to say that there were not improvements shown within the data,

But, you might think that teachers getting about five percent raises would lead to all higher and not some lower indications of student learning or test score performance.

When declines are in every grade, it’s hard to call this cherry picking.

How many readers or educators in McHenry County would expect to get rewarded with a $12,000 raise for test score declines for every grade tested? If you know of any examples, let me know.

Olson did not stick around to answer parents’ questions.

She left last Thursday’s board meeting before the public part of the meeting agenda was concluded. Superintendent Burkey was conspicuously absent from the entire meeting. Busy elsewhere, one would imagine.

Linda Bertold, a District 158 mother, publicly commented on the test scores. She may have explained the big difference between the ISAT scores Illinois uses in the lower grades and the PSAE scores used in the 11th grade.

Mrs. Bertold quoted Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education and former Chicago Public Schools Superintendent:

“In some states, including my state of Illinois, we’re actually lying to children.

“When you tell the parent that their child is meeting the ‘state standard,’
the logical assumption is that they’re on track to be successful.

“I would argue that, in many places, the standard has been dummied down so much that those children who are just meeting the standard are barely able to graduate from high school and absolutely inadequately prepared to go on to a competitive four year university, much less graduate.”

The quote was from an interview with Phi Delta Kappan magazine September 2009 Vol. 91, No.01, pp. 24-29.

Someone in Huntley School District 158 hired an attorney specializing in Special Ed in July.

I didn’t see any board vote on the issue. Did you?

At the Special Ed Parents Advisory meeting last night, attorney Teri Engler from the law firm Sraga Houser, LLC., announced she was hired in July.

Normally you might hear such an announcement at a board meeting. There was nothing said about it at the August board meeting. Try finding the hiring of a law firm on a board agenda in recent months.

Board Policy 2.160 states;

“The Board of Education may enter into an agreement for legal services with a specific attorney or law firm.”

Maybe there us a way around that which was exercised.

This makes three law firms getting taxpayers money from the Huntley School District.

Agreements or contracts which require votes have to be voted on in open, public session.

Try finding a retainer agreement in the district’s board packets. I couldn’t find it. Looks like I will have to file a Freedom of Information request.

Wouldn’t you think a law firm, in this case Sraga Hauser LLC with an office in Oak Brook, would want its hiring to be done by following board policy and the Open Meetings Act?

There was no announcement about the new attorney made by the district’s Special Ed Director in any of the public meetings in August, including the August Parents Advisory Committee meeting.

Attorney Engler made an hour-long presentation on the fifteen chapters of a Illinois State Board of Education handout titled, “Educational Rights and Responsibilities.”

She had gotten through the first three chapters when her one-hour of interaction was closed out by a District 158 administrator. 

Chapter 11 is “Conflict Resolution.”

Someone should have suggested she could have started there.

Huntley’s Special Ed director interrupted at least once to explain how the district was doing things the right way.

This was after parents pointed out compliance deficiencies.

I wish I could have captured a snapshot of the lawyer’s face when one parent explained to attorney Engler that the curriculum director, Dr. Mary Olson, had publicly told parents,

“Some kids will never be readers.”

As you can probably guess, that statement may be less than top-shelf consistent with the spirit and legal obligation of the district to provide a “free appropriate public education” (FAPE).

Attorney Engler agreed with a parent that having a sixth grade student help her child was not a ‘Response to Intervention” (RtI). The district actually needs to provide someone who is educationally qualified to help the student.

You might think something like this is common sense obvious and parents wouldn’t have to argue about it in order to get it corrected by their school district.

There were no less than 16 paid teachers, certified specialists and administrators attending, plus attorney Engler at the meeting.

Why so many paid staff?

Any consensus decisions are decided by majority vote and the district apparently wants a substantial vote count just in case.

School Board member Aileen Seedorf was the only board member who took the time to attend. Superintendent John Burkey and other board members were otherwise occupied.

Half the time the Skinner family was vacationing in the Intermountain West, Huntley School Superintendent John Burkey was in China.

Most of the junket seems to have been financed by the Chinese, at least that’s what a a front page article by Jameel Naqvi reported Monday.

Last year I sat through a show and tell of another administrator’s trip to Taiwan. Curriculum Director Mary Olson had a good story to go with her slides.

I emailed Burkey asking two questions which readers of McHenry County Blog would expect to learn:

• What, if any District 158 tax dollars were spent on the trip to China?
• Was he (Supt. Burkey) using vacation days for the trip?

The reply?

“Please complete the FOIA )Freedom of Information Act) for your request and submit as required.“

I did.

Let’s see how long it takes to get answers to questions that should not require a Freedom of Information request to be filed.