Nearly six months after unlawfully closing a meeting to the public, the Yorkville Community School District 115 Board of Education has finally agreed to release the audio recording of that meeting.
The matter that was closed to the public on August 7th, 2023, was a discussion about prohibiting the use of the book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by attorney Bryan Stevenson from being used in the curriculum. The book focuses on injustices in the United States judicial system and documents Stevenson’s efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian, a black Alabama man who was convicted of murder in 1988 and spent six years on death row before an appeals court finally overturned his conviction.
Multiple complaints about the Board’s closed meeting were sent to the Illinois Attorney General starting in September of 2023, but the Board had their legal team fight the allegations. On December 27th, the Attorney General determined that the closed meeting was unlawful and ordered that the meeting recording be released to the public.
Check CU sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the recording on January 1st, but the District’s FOIA Officer, Cathy Anderson, denied that request and would not respond to our follow up email which was sent on January 11th. On that same date, District Director of Communications Brent Edwards issued a press release about the illegal closed meeting, saying that “Relevant documents concerning this matter were released to the public with appropriate redactions in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, in the interests of transparency.” Edwards failed to mention that they had just denied a FOIA request for the meeting recording.
On January 17th, Edwards sent a demand letter to Check CU, requesting that we alter one of our news articles about the illegal meeting.
The Board of Education held meetings on January 9th and 10th, but did not bother to address the Attorney General determination at either of those meetings. Instead, they waited until January 22nd, when they finally agreed to comply with the AG’s order to make the recording publicly available.
Check CU sent another FOIA request for the meeting recording on January 22nd. Initially, FOIA Officer Anderson refused to provide the recording electronically, arguing that it needed to be sent on a flash drive by US mail. We created a shared Dropbox folder as an easier cost-free method of conveyance, but at first Anderson refused to use that method, saying, “We are only providing the recording on flash drives.” It took several days and a total of 17 emails to gain compliance, since Anderson repeatedly provided the wrong files, but we eventually received the correct file on January 29th.
Update 1/30/2024: we just received records in response to a January 17th request seeking FOIA officer training certificates. Records show that Cathy Anderson as well as Kreg Wesley (Executive Director of Finance & Operations) were appointed as FOIA officers by the Board of Education on May 8th, 2023. State law requires FOIA officers to complete training within 30 days of appointment. However, Wesley’s training certificate is dated January 18th (the day after we asked for it), and Anderson’s training certificate is dated January 25th, 2024 – eight days after we asked for it. Anderson had also issued a 5 day extension on the morning of January 25th, apparently to give herself time to complete the training. It seems District FOIA officers only complied with the mandatory training because we asked to see the certificates. When Anderson provided these records, the training certificates were inexplicably buried under 70 pages of other records that we did not ask for, but which the District provided anyways.
The closed session recording of the Yorkville Community School District 115 Board of Education meeting on August 7, 2023 is provided below. We have refined the audio to remove some noise, and used a transcription tool to create subtitles. However, due to the poor audio clarity, the transcription has a number of errors throughout, so please don’t rely on the transcribed text for exact quotes.
This document shows our (most recent) frustrating attempts to acquire the audio recording:
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I taught English in public schools for twenty years. If I was a teacher in this district and heard this recording of this board so blatently disrespecting the credentials, experience, and integrity. The four board members that voted for the removal of the book (Demas, Crawford, Houston, and Knoll) quite obviously came into the conversation with their minds made up – and with minutes left on the recording, the other two board members (Schumacher – a college English professor) are still fighting for the teachers and the integrity of the unit and the other (Smoger) seems to feel like they’d already reached an agreement to keep the text while offering other texts to be read in conjunction or in place of Just Mercy.
Crawford steers the vote at the end, disregarding one of the discussed options without the consensus of his fellow board members, but no where in this 80 minutes was there actual discussion of the merits of the book for what it was being used for in the curriculum.
One voice kept calling it “too controversial” but never explained what the controversy was.
The college professor said multiple times that it was a flawed book, which made it perfect for the assignment students were asked to do – but why should they listen to the one board member with any credentials that speak to the issue at hand?
One board member was allowed to tell a story about how he talked to some teenage employees of his, and that story was accepted as fact – that students were being bullied for their opinions on the book. If this was happening, why weren’t other students and teachers brought in to corroborate the story? How can some guy who ran for the board with the expressed intention of banning books with racial themes be allowed to enter (what certainly feels like a made up) story into evidence without proof?
Several times the disrespect of teachers was brought up and dismissed, because certain folks in that room came in with an agenda and they weren’t going to back down.
The people of Yorkville better get out and vote in 2025. The only two voices of reason on this transcript (Schumacher and Smoger) are up for re-election, as are the board member that was added after this meeting (Middendorf) and one of the men who ran with the intent to ban books like this one (Houston).
I’ve taught for 6 years and have been following this story as a member of another district.
This board is a walking joke – as is the communications director who’s been highlighted in several articles. It’s quite ironic that there’s more political, ego-driven, and entitled behavior among this group than there is within a typical high school student body.
A joke.