District 46 Paid For Awards
The Daily Herald Editorial staff also weighed in on District 46 paying a consultant who gave them awards. There take: “It’s not an award if you’re paying for it“. [Emphasis mine]
The total tab, once you include pay for substitutes for teachers gone traveling, was $40,468.
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The District 46 board and administrators never mentioned they were paying the award-giver — not after Web pages for Prairieview School in Hainesville and Meadowview and Woodview schools in Grayslake touted the awards, not after press releases were sent out, not until our reporter started asking questions.
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But Superintendent Ellen Correll and board members should be ashamed of their lack of candor and suspicious of Blue Ribbon’s role in it. Even the name of the award, so similar to the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon Schools awards, suggests a deliberate desire to confuse.School leaders should have declined the awards, knowing they appeared to come with strings attached.
And they should apologize to taxpayers for allowing such generous travel spending under the guise of rewarding a job well done. One project cited as resulting from the trip, installation of SMART Board electronic chalkboards, could have been launched with fewer people staying closer to home, since other suburban districts already use the devices.
I would have to agree. There is an appearance of impropriety if nothing else.
