There was a classic moment at Huntley School District 158’s board meeting.

It started with board member Larry Snow making a motion to amend the board majority’s motion.

Here it is:

Whereas Jefferson Wells makes no reference to the word “misappropriations” in its report of June 29, 2007, the phrase “nor specific evidence or support regarding the allegations of misappropriation” be stricken from the second “Whereas” in this resolution.

Straightforword enough.

If the forensic accountant’s final report didn’t say anything about not finding anything about allegations of misappropriation, then the resolution shouldn’t say it.

Snow said that he had looked many times throughout the final June 29th report, word by word, looking for the word “misappropriation” and couldn’t find it.

And couldn’t find the phrase that was taken as a “finding” from the forensic accountant’s final report.

Snow asked if the other board members can show him where this wording or finding is, he would be glad to withdraw the motion to amend.

That’s when board member CPA Kevin Gentry said that the wording was in his final report of June 29th and asked Snow to look on page 3 at the first paragraph under Investigative Conclusion (bold and underline in the report)

That’s when the getting got good.

Snow looks at his page 3 at the first paragraph and says that his report doesn’t have that conclusion in it.

And Gentry says that it is in his final report.

Now you have to picture this.

Snow sits next to Gentry on the board.

Snow leans over and looks at what Gentry has printed out and says

“You have a different final report than me. There’s two different final reports with the same June 29th date. Mine is a spiral bound original handed out at the meeting. What’s yours?”

Gentry then says something like he printed it off his computer. Snow says something like

“How can there be two different forensic accountant final reports with the same date with a different conclusion in each?”

At that point the board majority and Superintendent Burkey have these dumbfounded expressions on their faces as in what do we say when we are caught at a public meeting B U S T E D!!!

After moments of–What do I say now?–silence, board member Aileen Seedorf says (paraphrasing closely)

“I have an original bound final report and mine has the same wording as Mr. Snow’s”.

(Seedorf sits on the other side of Snow and compared her page 3 to his.)

Obviously there can only be one final report dated June 29, 2007 that on the bottom left of the report pages has printed

How Gentry got his copy, how the conclusion got changed or not, who changed it or didn’t, and how it came about getting changed or not, raises a lot of interesting questions.

You would think that Gentry, a C.P.A. who got together with board members Quagliano, a C.P.A. and Green to draft the resolution might have been a bit more careful.

Wait a minute, who cares what is actually true or who needs to be careful when you have a majority of votes and can declare anything true you want, by resolution of the Board of Education.

What do you think happened to Snow’s motion to amend?

It got voted down by the board majority 4-2. The two C.P.A.’s, a police officer and furniture salesperson liked their version of Jefferson Wells’ final report a lot better than what was actually handed out to board members.

The resolution ended with this declaration.

1. The recitals set forth above are found to be true and correct.

It made me look up the spelling of this word:

chutzpah

I found chutzpa and hutzpa as well:

n. Utter nerve; effrontery: “has the chutzpah to claim a lock on God and morality” (New York Times)