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Dear Taxpayers of CUD #23:
We, the member of Citizens for
Education, have made repeated attempts to retrieve information and
ask questions of our school board to no avail. The Citizens for
Education voted to use the news media as a way to inform all CUD #23
taxpayers of some of concerns we have that affects all taxpayers.
Our only goal is to seek the truth. Following are a few of the
topics for which we have expressed concern and requested
information:
1. Sandy Ellis was terminated from the
office of Superintendent of our district with no explanation to the
taxpayers. The rumor reports $300,000.00 (three hundred thousand
dollars) to $380,000 (three hundred eighty thousand dollars)
including a buyout of her contract with the district. All documents
pertaining to this issue were requested by Citizens for Education
and were denied with the exception of a previously released one page
of board meeting minutes in which her termination was accepted by
the board. We have been advised that all of these requested
documents cannot be sealed from the public because they document the
expenditure of taxpayers’ monies. In order to allocate money from
the school budget, board members must make a motion, there must be a
second, and a full roll call vote is recorded by individual names.
That said, the Ellis termination/buy-out was voted on by each school
board member serving at that time. As previously requested, we
respectfully request a full and complete accounting of the Supt.
Sandy Ellis termination as previously requested.
2. The budget for the new addition to
the high school building was approved by the school board for
$1,200,000 (one million two hundred thousand dollars) and is now
rumored to be over $2,400,000 (two million four hundred thousand
dollars). We do not feel the taxpayers have been properly informed
of such a drastic increase in the cost of this project. We
respectfully request a full and complete accounting of the costs
involved with the addition instead of continuing with the "pay as
you go" policy this school board has adopted.
3. The Citizens for Education
requested enrollment figures from the current administration three
times and each time a different set of numbers was reported. With
this information, our best guess is the high school enrollment will
fall below two hundred students in the next two to three years. Our
greatest fear is that the State of Illinois will mandate our merging
into a county high school because of an insufficient number of
students. At a meeting in February 2006 Supt. Phil Shelton responded
to this concern by saying, "We are discussing the junior high school
now, not the high school." The only responses from the school board
to this issue are "you cannot predict the future" and "you cannot
plan, only react." We have been informed privately that the
population of Mt. Pulaski really doesn’t care one way or another
about what happens to the schools. We respectfully request a five
year plan as well as a ten year plan for the future of CUD #23
schools from Supt. Shelton and the school board.
4. It has been rumored that too large
of a basement area for the new high school addition was excavated
and the dirt was given away at no cost. When this error was
discovered, it is our understanding that the school district paid
for moving the location of the new addition, purchased dirt to fill
the hole, and paid to fill the hole itself to the tune of a reported
$80,000 (eighty thousand dollars) to $190,000 (one hundred ninety
thousand dollars). We respectfully request an answer to each of
these questions: Why should the taxpayers foot the bill for this
significant error during construction? Why didn’t the engineer
and/or the contractor cover the financial aspects of this sizeable
error? Are there other errors made by the engineer and contractors
that we, as taxpayers, have had to pay for as well?
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5. In the school financials we have
received, the school board appropriates between $4,000 (four
thousand dollars) and $6,000 (six thousand dollars) a year so the
members can attend the annual school board convention in Chicago.
Many school districts have opted out of this convention deeming it
as an unnecessary expense. It has been reported CUD #23 is facing a
$300,000 (three hundred thousand dollar) deficit in the 2006-2007
budget, but our school board claims they "have taken every cost
saving measure possible" including skipping one year of updating
computers in the schools. (They are currently back on their three
year rotation of the computer lease.) It has been rumored that not
all of the school board members and their families arrived on the
dates they had reserved a room, so the taxpayers paid for empty
hotel rooms. We respectfully request an answer to each of the
following questions: How is attendance at the school board
convention more important to the education of the children of this
school district than updating computers in the schools? What benefit
do we, as taxpayers, gain by the board members attending this
convention? Was any reimbursement personally made by any school
board members for their failure to attend any part of this
convention after they made reservations? If the school board members
are so frivolous in spending taxpayers’ monies in small matters how
can they be trusted in large matters?
6. The United States and State of
Illinois governments allow taxpayers access to information discussed
during open meetings. The Open Meetings Act requires access to
information if taxpayers request this information through the proper
channels. The Citizens for Education group has submitted numerous
requests and a few of these have been denied. As of June 2006 not
one of these requests has been brought to the open session of the
school board meetings for approval or denial. (See
http://www.ag.state.il.us/ for information regarding the
Open Meetings Act.) One taxpayer of this school district requested
to address the school board and was denied the request to be on the
agenda because the topic of discussion was "too broad." We ask the
school board if they feel they are being responsive and respectful
of the taxpayers of CUD #23? If so, we respectfully disagree.
These questions are being sent to
every school board member as well as several media outlets. Our hope
is they will be read at the next scheduled school board meeting, if
we are allowed on the agenda, and the school board will answer these
questions so the truth will be revealed. We respectfully invite
everyone interested to attend the meeting in the Unit District #23
office on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 7:00 p.m.
Sincerely,
Citizens for Education
P.O. Box 285
Elkhart, IL 62634
From the LDN archives
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