Lessons Learned from the School Board — the Hard Way.

CHAPTER THREE — Transparency and documentation.

As indicated from the outset, this report is about holding our Board of Education and its individual members accountable for their leadership of Township High School District 113 in Highland Park and Deerfield. Ultimately, in carefully following the facts, readers should be able to identify lessons learned to help ensure the success of District 113's mission. It is essential to focus on "the tone at the top" and to evaluate the Board of Education's performance from beginning to end in the actual scenario that the report details.

This report is not about resurrecting allegations against a principal and two assistant principals that are long gone from District 113. To focus on them as individuals is a distraction. Yet, there are people responding to this blog on social media who dispute the facts, without providing any facts in rebuttal, or who will admit the facts may be true, but even so, they would have you think that the the document destruction by these school administrators are no longer relevant. As a result, posting these documents today, along with further comment, is necessary.

This report is primarily intended to provide transparency and constructive discourse in the community about our School Board's performance and relationship with the community. Hopefully, it will help enable existing and future members of the School Board to improve a governance system that is evidently sorely lacking, These improvements are for the betterment of our children’s education. They will also help foster a better environment for administrators, teachers, staff, and contractors who are essential resources in achieving the mission of District 113.

Transparency is a key element of sound management in business, not for profits, and government. Yet, there was no transparency when only a select group of people in Highland Park and Deerfield were aware of the existence of the major document destruction in June 2017. The thousands of documents that each of the perpetrators discarded included personal student documents that District 113 is required to keep, and entrusted to keep private, as well as their own personal documents that should not have been in the school district's records in the first place (but, yes, many people clog their emails at work with personal correspondence). District 113 owned all of these documents.

The School Board was aware of the theft from the outset. It does not appear that the matter was ever referred to the Highland Park police. Identifying the missing records required a lot of work by various administrators and staff. Even still, nothing was reported to the community, not a word of it communicated outside of an inner circle. The City of Highland Park also assigns a council member to serve as liaison to the District 113 who must report the City Council as a whole, but it does not appear that the liaison was welcome to attend special closed meetings (at least, not the one reported on here). It would be reasonable to inquire of our City Council how many of them knew about these facts, but in an "unofficial" capacity.

The Whistleblower Letter called it what it was — a cover up. There appears to have been an inner circle that knew all the details — the School Board, Anthony Loizzi, and Superintendent Digman. Of those three, there was only one person dedicated to holding the perpetrators accountable, Superintendent Digman. It appears from details in the Whistleblower Letter that the Superintendent was shackled by the Board from disclosing the information, moving forward in cooperation with the Lake County State's Attorney's investigation, and penalized.

There was also a relatively wider circle of people in the school system who knew all about this incident, as well as what the School Board did and didn't do to hold people accountable. One might say that the fact that administrators, staff and teachers learned that there was this major wrongdoing, and that the School Board didn't hold anyone accountable for it, may be even more egregious than the criminal destruction of property. This leaves a lasting impression on the school's governance.

Imagine how administrators, teachers and staff feel when they go to work in an environment where they are too scared to report wrongdoing because they reasonably fear they will be the next person to be fired for doing the right thing. The community should be grateful to the Whistleblowers for ultimately disclosing facts that would have otherwise been buried.

To those who think this is all water under the bridge and irrelevant, there is, in fact, a case currently pending, in 2022, now, in Federal Court, filed by Amy Burnetti, a former District 113 assistant principal. In this litigation, Ms. Burnetti claims, in part, that she was fired in retaliation for providing evidence and testimony to assist with the investigation into the June 2017 destruction of school records, as well as in retaliation for another compliance matter which is not part of this report (readers are encouraged to read the complaint).

In July 2017, when the School Board would have been notified of the document destruction, these were the members of the Board of Education:

Michelle Culver, President

Elizabeth Garlovsky

Julie Gordon

Debra Hymen

Alena Laube

Stacey Meyer

David Small

In 2019, the Lake County State’s Attorney was prepared to move ahead with its investigation and prosecution for the alleged crimes. They reached out to confirm that the School District would fully cooperate. The LCSA and members of his office told me, in one of several meetings, that without the School Board's cooperation, his office could not have a successful prosecution and the matter would be dropped. In 2019, the following people served as elected officials on the District 113 School Board:

Elizabeth Garlovsky, President

Stacey Meyer, Vice President

Gayle Byck

Michelle Culver

Debra Hymen

Alena Laube

Ken Fishbain

On March 20, 2019, there was a Special Board of Education Meeting (minutes of meeting), all board members in attendance. Also attending that meeting was Anthony Loizzi, of the HLERK law firm. The closed session included, as an agenda item, the “appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the District or legal counsel for the District, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. 5 ILCS 120/2(c)(1).”

It is reasonable to assume (but, for obvious reasons —this was a closed meeting —this has not yet been confirmed) that the School Board discussed the Lake County State's Attorney's investigation on March 20, 2019. On March 22, 2019, Anthony Loizzi issued a "no harm-no foul" letter to the State's Attorney. In that letter, he told the LCSA that ..."since the inception of this matter, [the School Board had] no interest in pursuing any criminal charges or further criminal investigation against the former administrators."

If the purpose of the Closed Meeting at the Special Board of Education Meeting was to discuss the Lake County State's Attorney's criminal investigation against three former employees of the District, this raises the significant possibility that the School Board violated the Open Meetings Act that evening. Indeed, it is likely that this matter was discussed at, at least, several Closed Meeting of the Board of Education after the incidents took place in June 2017. There may have been numerous violations of the Open Meetings Act.

The primary purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to "ensure that the actions of public bodies be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly," so it would seem unlikely that it would protect discussions about former employees. All three of the administrators alleged to have committed the document destruction were former employees before the school ever discovered that the documents were missing. On its face, the Open Meetings Act appears to provide confidentiality only for current employees.

At long last, to those who have questioned the facts in Lessons Learned from the School Board, the are provided below, accessible through their links to Google Documents. All documents were acquired through FOIA requests to District 113 and the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office (some of the FOIA requests had to be appealed up through the Attorney General's office). Any redactions (some in white, some in black) were made by the FOIA officers, ostensibly in compliance with FOIA law.

Robbins Schwartz letter to Lake County States Attorney, Michael G. Nerheim, dated December 6, 2017: “Given the severity of the conduct at issue (thousands of documents are involved), we are referring this matter to the Lake County State's Attorney to review and determine the proper course of action and whether any criminal investigations or prosecutions should be commenced. Please contact me with any questions you may have.”

Records involved in Record Destruction HPHS 2017

Grand Jury Subpoena January 2018

Anthony J. Loizzi letter to Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office, dated March 22, 2019 "..the Board wishes to inform the Lake County State's Attorney's office that it believes it did not suffer any harm from the former administrators' conduct, and, as has been the case since the inception of this matter, it has no interest in pursuing any criminal charges or further criminal investigation against the former administrators."

Links to all chapters of this report:

Chapter Four
Chapter Five