Dr. Drury (sort of) out, Dr. Baker in for now
Posted on October 15, 2009
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After a fifth special meeting, District 200 has announced in a written statement that Dr. Drury is stepping down as superintendent and will be replaced in the interim with Dr. Charles Baker, retired principal from WWSHS (from which I graduated in 1997) who currently serves the district as Interim Director of High School Curriculum. According to the statement, whatever matters of disagreement arose between Dr. Drury and the board happened in August, well before the controversy over the President’s speech. I guess the shot in the dark I took last week concerning the situation wasn’t as far-fetched as I thought. Essentially, it sounds like Drury and the board planned to part ways and have been hammering out a new employment agreement to replace the existing contract.
A few major points that should be taken from the statement:
- Dr. Drury will continue to work for the district in a different/reduced capacity than as superintendent. He will continue to get paid his salary through March 2010, at which point his resignation from District 200 will be effective.
- Dr. Baker will serve as interim superintendent under his current salary structure. No additional cost to the district.
- The board will immediately begin searching for a new superintendent.
So Dr. Drury and Dr. Baker will be more or less swapping jobs. In short, the district will not be paying any more salaries next month than it is today. The cost to taxpayers through March will be the same as it was before.
Thank you to the board for putting out a statement tonight. Let’s hope the rumors can calm down while district adjusts to the news.
Third Meeting
Posted on October 12, 2009
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A third special meeting has been called by the District 200 board, on Tuesday the 13th at 7:30pm. The board is expected to take some form of action after another closed session. I am unable to attend due to other obligations, but local media outlets should be on hand to report.
Whole Lotta Nothin’ Going On
Posted on October 8, 2009
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Tonight’s special board meeting [allegedly] concerning superintendent Dr. Richard Drury’s employment was sort of like the 2009 Chicago Cubs: Lots of hype, public interest, media coverage, and rumors about contracts, but nothing really there in the end.
Rumors have been swirling all week regarding Dr. Drury, who, depending on what source you believe, has either been on vacation since Sept. 22 or is facing imminent termination or resignation. A special meeting on Monday resulted in no action taken, and tonight’s meeting was announced then. The same two speakers from the public comment portion on Monday, attorney and de facto school district pundit Mark Stern and former candidate for Wheaton city council west district Mark Kmiecik, also spoke tonight. Stern’s comments were generally in support of Drury and suggested that dismissing him mid-school year, if that were to be the case, would be both disruptive and costly to the district. Kmiecik stated that the community wanted to know what was going on, which seemed to be representative of the general consensus in the audience. Reporters from the Daily Herald, Wheaton Sun, and Chicago Tribune were also in attendance.
After the publc comment period, the board went into closed session for approximately three hours. Dr. Drury and attorneys for both sides appeared to take part in the conversation behind closed doors. When they returned, board president Andy Johnson stated that no action had been taken, and that another meeting may be scheduled for next week along with the regular bi-monthly meeting. The board refused to make any other comment, frustrating many in in the audience.
Although at this point it’s still not clear what led to Drury’s….whatever it is that it is, my preliminary feeling is that the board is in a sticky place politically. There are, basically, four possible outcomes of this:
1. Drury is fired for cause, and the board looks bad for renewing his contract three months ago. If he’s playing bad ball, why offer to re-sign him?
2. Drury is fired for no cause - reasons political or other. By the terms of his contract, the district would be on the hook for one year salary + benefits, around $250k. This makes angry taxpayers.
3) Drury resigns for reasons thus far unknown. No payout (unless of course some kind of severance is negotiated), but board walks away with egg on face. See #1
4) Nothing happens; Drury remains with District 200. If this is the case, why the commotion and secrecy?
In any event, it’s a personnel matter and the board can’t comment publicly even if it wants to. Their hands appear tied with few good options if any, and a public relations nightmare. All in all not a good place to be.
But what actually is the situation? One rumor is that Drury’s leaving is tied to the Obama speech controversy. I really don’t think that theory makes a whole lot of sense. For starters, while many people were upset with how that situation was handled (my Obama-supporting self included), I don’t think a very sizable number were literally calling for the superintendent’s resignation. Second, it just doesn’t make much political sense in Wheaton to do this if board members want to be re-elected.
A fifth possibility, albeit remote, is that the employee being discussed isn’t even Dr. Drury. It should be stated for the record that we still don’t officially know who the employee in question is; it could conceivably be someone else. But since Drury has now apparently lawyered up, it’s all but certain that it’s him.
I personally think option #3 ought not to be automatically discounted out of hand. There’s a another possibility that hasn’t gotten much, if any, coverage from the media. Bear with me. Let’s say Drury is in fact resigning. Is it possible that the decision isn’t as sudden as it seems? Perhaps he’s planned on resigning for some time - personal reasons, medical reasons, maybe he’s just tired of the Wheaton/Warrenville political fighting, who knows - and maybe he wanted to wait until after Hubble was open and operating to announce anything. Likely? Probably not. Possible? Maybe.
Hopefully the board knows what it’s doing and is looking out for the best interests of the community. I think it would go a long way to put out some sort of statement, any statement to quell fears, even it’s just “Dr. Drury is the superintendent and is currently using earned vacation days, and we’ll comment further as soon as we can.” Putting some of the uncertainty to rest would be helpful for everyone.
Once again, if you have any information to share, preferably corroborated with facts, feel free to email me at the address in the “About” page. You can remain anonymous. And as always, thanks for reading.
Superintendent Situation
Posted on October 6, 2009
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If anyone reading this blog has any information you would like to share about what is going on with District 200 superintendent Richard Drury, feel free to contact me at the address on the “About” page (up in the grey bar above). Your name can be kept anonymous.
So far, here are what seem to be the facts that we know:
- The Sept. 9 board meeting was Dr. Drury’s most recent public appearance
- Drury was absent from the Sept. 23 meeting
- Drury has been out of the office since Sept. 22
- Board members Andy Johnson and Barbara Intihar have stated that Drury is on vacation and gave adequate notice of that vacation
- A special board meeting took place on Monday, Oct. 5 (notice issued to newspapers on Saturday, Oct. 3) with a closed session regarding personnel matters. The closed session is rumored but not confirmed to concern Dr. Drury. No action was taken
- Another special board meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 7, and as of Tuesday morning is posted on the district’s meeting notices page.
I’ll post an update after the Wednesday meeting. Again, if you have any information out there, please pass it along!
Analyzing the Election
Posted on April 8, 2009
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…or, How Mark Stern is Fudging the Facts (Again)
It took less than 12 hours after the final votes were tallied for Mark Stern to write a misleading analysis of yesterday’s election results (Ed. note 4/9/09: The “statistical note” section at the bottom of Stern’s page wasn’t written until after I wrote this post last night). He fudges the numbers to make it seem like there was a dramatic decrease in support for Johnson, Intihar, Coghill, and Knicker compared with their previous election in 2005:
Candidate
Votes 2005
Votes 2009
% 2005
%2009
Coghill
7358
4510
65.3
<50.0
Johnson
7170
4532
63.7
50.2
Intihar
6931
4746
61.5
52.6
Knicker
6391
4040
56.7
44.8
Four years of deficit spending ago, all the incumbents had much higher margins. If the incumbents enjoy the wide support they claim, why have both their vote totals and percentages of support declined so dramatically?
There’s only one problem: It’s not true. This analysis is both misleading and wrong. Let’s tackle the latter and then the former. Mark’s table up above doesn’t tell any lies, except by omission. But it’s wrong because it’s not how elections are tallied or reported and it’s not an accurate reflection of the votes cast. What Mark is calling “percentages of support” is really the number of votes the candidate received divided by the number of ballots cast in the District, whether those ballots had any votes cast for District 200 or not. For example, Andrew Johnson received 4532 votes on 9,024 ballots cast, giving a figure of 50.22%. But that doesn’t bear any relation to the percentage of actual votes he received, since it’s counting blank ballots (for the District 200 race), of which there are presumably a not insignificant amount, in the total. Here are the numbers as they are actually tallied and reported:
George Kocan 2645 11.15%
Andrew Johnson 4532 19.11%
Barbara Intihar 4746 20.01%
Charles Pfeister 3246 13.69%
Joann Coghill 4510 19.01%
Ken Knicker 4040 17.03%
Furthermore, Mark doesn’t apply this same math to the challenger candidates. Let’s do the exact same calculation with Kocan and Pfeister in 2009 and with Stern in 2005:
Candidate Year Votes %Support
Mark Stern 2005 5248 46.60%
Charles Pfeister 2009 3246 35.97%
George Kocan 2009 2645 29.31%
You should note two important things from this table. First, the same math that understates the support for the incumbents can also imply a better turnout for a losing candidate. You might look at Stern’s 46.6% for 2005 and think he “almost” won election, but this is not the case. Stern received over 1,000 votes less than the next candidate and was not close to being elected with only 15.86% of the vote. Second, the challengers in 2009 received far fewer votes than Stern did in 2005, in raw numbers and as a percentage of ballots.
Stern’s analysis of the election is also misleading because he tells a major lie of omission. In claiming a decrease in support for the incumbents, he ignores the fact that while 2009 was a 6-way race, 2005 was only a 5-way race. One cannot simply compare percentages from a 6-way race and a 5-way race and draw any meaningful conclusions. But that’s not to say we can’t do any analysis. What if we were to re-calculate the results of 2005 while hypothesizing that it was a 6-way race instead of a 5-way race, and then compare that to 2009? For comparison’s sake, in other words, what might have happened in 2005 if two Mark Sterns had been on the ballot? Let’s first take a look at the final results from 2005, with winning candidates in bold:
Registered Voters: 50022 Ballots Counted: 11262 % Turnout: 22.51%
(1) % of (2) % of Candidate Votes Percent Ballots% inc. vote Barbara Intihar 6931 20.94% 61.54% 24.89% Andrew Johnson 7170 21.66% 63.67% 25.75% Mark Stern 5248 15.86% 46.60% Joann Coghill 7358 22.23% 65.33% 26.42% Ken Knicker 6391 19.31% 56.75% 22.95%
Total 33098
Total Incumbent 27850 84.14%
Total Challenger 5248 15.86%
Notes 1. Votes for candidate as a percent of
total ballots cast.
2. Candidate's vote share as a percentage of
votes for all incumbent candidates
Now let’s make several assumptions, all of which either benefit the challengers or are candidate-neutral:
- “Candidate 6″ enters the race as another challenger, and pulls the same number of votes (5248) as Mark Stern
- The incumbents votes are reduced by the same 5248 (i.e. all of Candidate’s 6 was siphoned off from incumbents)
- Total turnout and number of votes cast remains the same
- The remaining votes are apportioned between Intihar, Johnson, Coghill, and Knicker in the same proportions as in the actual 2005 election
Here’s the resultant breakdown based on this hypothesis:
Registered Voters: 50022 Ballots Counted: 11262 % Turnout: 22.51%
Adjusted % of % of
Votes Percent Ballots inc. vote
Barbara Intihar 5,625 16.99% 49.95% 24.89%
Andrew Johnson 5,819 17.58% 51.67% 25.75%
Mark Stern 5,248 15.86% 46.60% N/A
Joann Coghill 5,971 18.04% 53.02% 26.42%
Ken Knicker 5,187 15.67% 46.05% 22.95%
Candidate 6 5,248 15.86% 46.60% N/A
Total 33098 (Adjusted votes are rounded)
Total Incumbent 22602 68.29% Total Challenger 10496 31.71%
You can see a couple of interesting things right off the bat. Perhaps most interesting is that Mark Stern would be sitting on the board today and Ken Knicker would not. Comparing this table to the 2009 actual results, the support for incumbents in 2009 does not decrease at all. In fact, the percent of votes received by Inihar, Johnson, Coghill, and Knicker all increase in 2009 when compared to a hypothetical 6-way 2005 race:
Adjusted 2005 Actual 2009 Change
Barbara Intihar 16.99% 20.01% +3.01%
Andrew Johnson 17.58% 19.11% +1.53%
Joann Coghill 18.04% 19.01% +0.97%
Ken Knicker 15.67% 17.03% +1.36%
Although much of this analysis is based on assumption, my assumptions are friendly to the challengers. You can see that the supposed decrease in support for the incumbent candidates simply does not exist. These board members continue to have widespread community support.
2009 Election Results
Posted on April 8, 2009
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Congratulations Andy Johnson, Barbara Intihar, Ken Knicker, and Joann Coghill for winning re-election to the Board of Education for another 4-year term. While there has been some honest criticism of board actions over the last few years, we believe this group is the best choice to continue leading the District at this time. While I don’t personally agree with every decision, I have confidence that this board will do what is necessary to balance the budget, update Jefferson, continue providing the quality education District 200 has come to expect, and maybe undo those cuts to the music program. Here are the full election-night results:
George Kocan 2645 11.15% Andrew Johnson 4532 19.11% Barbara Intihar 4746 20.01% Charles Pfeister 3246 13.69% Joann Coghill 4510 19.01% Ken Knicker 4040 17.03%
These results are subject to small changes as absentee and provisional ballots are counted during the week, but this should be pretty close to the final results.
New name, Same site
Posted on April 8, 2009
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Update your bookmarks! RealHubbleFacts.com (which is currently the #1 search result on Google for hubble referendum) is now Blog200.org. You can expect this site to once again provide you with the best independent District 200 news, opinion, analysis, history, and obscure minutiae anywhere on the Internet. I will strive to provide news updates and articles on a weekly basis through the rest of the school year, and as time allows over the summer. Just a few of the topics I plan to cover soon:
- April election results
- 2009-2010 budget
- New Hubble progress
I’m also working a new, improved, and much more colorful look for the site. I hope you’ll continue reading Blog 200. Thanks for stopping by!
More of the Same
Posted on March 26, 2008
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Mark Stern continues complaining about the Board of Education. He threw down the gauntlet on his website the morning after the March 12 meeting with more inflammatory comments and ad hominem accusations. First, create a sense of crisis where none exists:
[T]he redistricting wave has now reached five of the 13 elementary schools and all four middle schools. The latest domino to fall is overcrowded Longfellow Elementary
Then tie it into an unrelated (but still important) issue:
About a dozen neighborhood residents came to speak; some had difficulty with English and had a single spokeswoman on their behalf. (This would be prohibited under the proposed public comment policy changes, and these folks would have had to wait until the end of the meeting to speak.)
Make an unfounded, politically charged attack on Board members:
[The Four Quarters Apartments’ residents] charged, in so many words, that the board’s proposal was racially motivated. In fact, the explanation is much simpler: these neighborhoods don’t vote in school board elections
Take a cheap shot at Warrenville:
If you live in Warrenville, it is a top board priority that you attend the closest middle school. If you live in Briarcliffe or Carol Stream, they’ll fit you in where they can.
Spin the facts and exaggerate:
…if students are already taking the bus, why not just go a little further? (This is not what we were told prior to the referendum, of course.) But board members who have been around as long as 20 years should be explaining why they implemented these noncontiguous, patchwork quilt attendance boundaries to begin with.
And finally, offer no alternative solution whatsoever in place of the District’s proposal.
We’ve discussed some of these topics on the Blog already, and I will do so more in the next few weeks. In the meantime, head on over to the Blog 200 boundary map (the link is in the header bar of this page) and I think you will see the boundaries aren’t as patchwork as Stern makes them out to be. I’ll update it soon with the 2008 Lowell changes, which simplify things on the southeast side of the district a bit.
Public Comment Procedures
Posted on March 26, 2008
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Educate 200 is raising a stink over a proposal to change some of the public comment procedures at District 200 Board meetings. In a nutshell, the Board is proposing to change three policies (links go to proposed revisions):
Policy 2.200 - Types of Board of Education Meetings: The proposal is to create a new type of meeting that would be strictly for public comment and informal conversation with Board members. Barbara Intihar stated that the idea is that these meetings would be casual and held at least quarterly, with the press invited to attend.
Policy 2.220 - Board of Education Meetings: Proposed changes on this policy do two things. One, public comments would be split between those relating to an agenda item and those on a topic not on the agenda. Comments on agenda items would stay where they are, toward the beginning of the meeting. Comments on other topics would be at the end of the meeting, after consent agenda and action items, and may be limited to 30 minutes as the Board often goes into closed session after the open session.
Policy 2.230 - Public Participation at Board of Education Meetings and Petitions to the Board (Longest. Policy name. Ever.): Mofied to allow the Board President to reserve the right to request items related to personnel or students be submitted privately or in writing for confidentiality reasons. Removes the ability for multiple people to pool their minutes for one speaker, up to 15 minutes, but conversely also removes text stating “The Board President may deny a person the opportunity to speak for more than 3 minutes.”
The Blog wholeheartedly supports the change to Policy 2.200, creating conversational meetings for residents (”Banter with the Board”). I’m not sure why Educate 200 or anyone else would be against this.
As for the other changes, I believe the Board should leave the public comment procedures alone. Members Intihar and Knicker spoke briefly about the reasoning behind their proposal, which I will write more about after tomorrow’s meeting. If the changes go through, bad publicity will likely follow. The Board just earned a great deal of goodwill with the recent referendum campaign, and it would be foolish to waste it. Regardless of the atual reasoning behind the proposals, the appearance will be that the Board is trying to shut down organized opposition such as that of groups like E200. As much as that might please some people, the Board should avoid that appearance and continue to welcome public comment whether at the causual meetings or the regular meetings.
Pass the changes to Policy 2.200, but please leave the rest alone.
Longfellow Crowding
Posted on March 26, 2008
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“Don’t panic”-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
A hot topic at the March 12 Board of Education meeting was the increasing attendance at Longfellow. Attendance has been going up over the last few years:
Longfellow has 463 students for the 2007-08 school year, and that number is anticipated to continue rising. There’s been a lot of townhouse and condo construction downtown lately, and Wescott Crossing near the library should be breaking ground soon with another 187 units which will be in the Longfellow attendance area. Longfellow, as built in 200, was designed as a three section school. Next year it will need four sections of K-4, and eventually four sections will be needed at all grades. Art and music classrooms have already been taken over and those subjects are currently taught from carts. This naturally presents a problem, which the Board will attempt to tackle this month. There’s too many sections and not enough rooms. But what can we do? Superintendent John Drury outlined some possible methods for mitigating the situation, and I’ll add a few others. None of them, unfortunatly, are very appealing. Read more
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