'I'm Pissed ... This is B.S.' Lincoln-Way Parents Explain Lawsuit

The parents of Lincoln-Way North speak bluntly.

“Why did I do this,” explained Liz Sands, founder of the parents group suing to stop the closing of LW North High. “Because I’m pissed.”

Todd Velky, another officer in their advocacy group, Lincoln-Way Area TaxPayers Unite, said much the same: “This is B.S.”

Speaking at a community center in Frankfort Square Wednesday afternoon before a standing-room crowd of fellow Lincoln-Way parents and students, and news media, Sands and Velky explained why they’ve been moved to anger and legal action.

For months, starting in the spring, the District 210 Board of Education and school administrators brushed off rumors that plans were afoot to close LW North — a school built and opened less than 10 years ago.

Then the board rushed ahead in August with what appeared to many a pre-determined conclusion — the board voted to close Lincoln-Way North after this school year. Superintendent Scott Tingley had been telling some employees for months that North would need to close, sources told Patch in the late spring. The public timeline took less than 60 days, and very little community input was sought. At the special board meeting convened for that vote, board members did not respond to comments and questions from residents and taxpayers.

“I trusted these people,” Sands said, at one point choking up. “I I didn’t just trust them with my money, I trusted them with our children and this is what we get for it.”

She believes the board betrayed that trust.

That inspired the formation of Lincoln-Way Area Taxpayers Unite, bringing Sands, Velky, Robert Ripp and many others together — a hundred others, Sands said — to look into Lincoln-Way District 210’s financial management for themselves.

They filed Freedom of Information Act requests, one after the other.

And when the district complied with their requests, the parents didn’t like what they saw. Worse, however, were the many times District 210 administrators failed to comply with their FOIA requests for payroll data, financial documents, contracts, detailed breakdowns of cost-savings anticipated with the closing of North, and other information.

What they did receive, puzzled them. And when school board members actively tried to thwart their efforts to gain information and refused to work with the parents to explore other solutions, their anger galvanized into action — and a lawsuit that seeks a temporary injunction to block the school closing.

Among the group’s findings and claims:

• each year, budgets projected surpluses, and yet each year the district fell into deficit spending; the pattern would repeat year after year, leading to an eight-year loss of more than $30 million, and yet no one questioned the process
• irregular accounting practices that transferred money between various funds — operations, education, student activities and transportation — based on handwritten notes from the superintendent
• failure to heed auditor’s warnings about financial risk
• creation of a dog-training center on school grounds — operated as a private business — using school resources and personnel
• failure to notice and rectify a growing water leak at Lincoln-Way Central — the district’s oldest high school — over five years, costing the district half a million dollars as dramatically increasing bills were paid without question when the ultimate repair cost just $73
• assistant superintendent of business Ron Sawin said in a public meeting the village of New Lenox replaced water meters in an effort to help the district find the leak, but LWATU contends the village says no meters were ever replaced
• granting sizable pay raises to administrators, some as high as 10 percent, according to LWATU, even as the district was deficit spending; immediately after taking over as superintendent with the 2013-14 academic year, Tingley awarded pay raises to all administrators
• repeated denials by the administration of FOIA requests for a payroll journal for district staff
• operating a 501(c)3 charitable foundation as “a separate legal entity” run by volunteers when the director is a full-time, salaried employee of the district
• an unusual line of credit on the parking lot at Lincoln-Way Central used to finance home mortgages listed to a bank trust with unknown beneficiaries

On Wednesday, the school board president, Kevin Molloy, declined comment. On Thursday afternoon, the district released this statement:

“The Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210 Board of Education is aware of the recent lawsuit regarding the decision to close one of the district’s four high schools, however, it would be inappropriate to comment on this pending litigation. While we respect the citizens’ right to pursue such action, we are saddened that they have chosen this path. As partners in our school community, the members of this board of education understand and share the frustration over the financial circumstances we are facing together. Decisions made by this board have been, and will continue to be made in good faith and without malice. The lawsuit, 500 pages of positions and exhibits, portrays a school board that brought very little, if any, critical scrutiny to bear on school district administrators and financial matters large and small.”

Members of the LWATU, and many parents who came to the August board of education meetings, say the board did not treat members of the community as “partners.”

The lawsuit, which does not seek financial damages, accuses administrators and school board members of failure to “operate in the best interests of the community, residents and taxpayers of the district for a substantial number of years.”

“We want to know, where is our money going?” Velky said. “It’s our tax dollars.”

The board “was a rubber stamp,” Sands said, and the information in the court filing is just “the tip of the iceberg.”

Also on Patch

• ‘I Am Disappointed,’ LW Grad Tells School Board. ‘Figure This Out’
• LW 210 Board President Speaks of ‘Venom’ and ‘Personal Attacks’

Ultimately, their goal is for the board to work with the community to find a better solution. Sands and Ripp told the gathering Wednesday that they believe, based on their study of the district’s financial records, that all four schools can remain open while the district puts in place a financial remediation plan.

Stephen Eberhardt, their attorney, said if a judge sides with the Lincoln-Way parents, the decision would be “precedent setting.” He said the board’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable,” and he hopes to convince a judge of that.

Responding to questions about their lawsuit costing the cash-strapped district even more money to defend, Sands and Velky said this could all go away if the district agrees to work with the parents to find better solutions.

At the same time, what the parents found on their fact-finding dig concerned them to such a degree that they’ve turned over much of their information to the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and the FBI. They hope someone will want to investigate the perceived irregularities.

“I’m just a mom,” Sands said.

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