Education Matters US

The case of Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 trying to keep the former superintendents contract is a ridiculous attempt to manipulate the Freedom of Information Act. The current school administration is costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars to prevent the public from seeing what is in the contract. One part of the case is that the school districts has already given the contract to the newspaper. Why should the paper have more rights than a local taxpayer?

Again, we learn more about how corrupt and secretive school districts are. They want the taxpayer to open their wallets and hand over as much money as the district says, but then they want you to shut up and not pay attention to how they actually spend that money.

Read a few excerpts about the case or the full article in the Daily Herald.

The case may have the potential of keeping the employment contracts of all public officials from public scrutiny.

Until this week, District 200 successfully argued that Catalani’s contract isn’t a public document because it’s kept in a personnel file.

The district also keeps current Superintendent Richard Drury’s employment contract in a personnel file and believes it, too, is not a public document.

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District 200’s reasoning relies on an old case in Peoria where the local newspaper sought performance evaluations of a school superintendent. A court blocked the newspaper’s attempt because the evaluations were located in a personnel file.
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Now a DuPage judge must review Catalani’s contract. The judge must determine if the contract contains any private information that should be redacted before it is released to Stern and the public.
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District 200 spokesman Robert Rammer said staff will review the appellate court’s ruling and get a recommendation from the district’s attorney before deciding whether to continue fighting the case.

If the legal fight continues, the Illinois Supreme Court may have to decide if it will review the arguments.

As you can see the District is playing games and costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars. If they continue the fight they will cost the taxpayers many thousands more. This is an expensive waste of taxpayer dollars. It is obvious their intentions. They want this and every other contract to be hidden from any public scrutiny freeing them to act with impunity with benefits and salary packages.

The greed and arrogance of many school administrators is just outrageous. This is just one more example of why we need funding and transparency reform for education. I leave you with the following quote from Leslie Graves of the Lucy Burns Institute, “no taxation without information”.