District 65 Used Capital Funds for Expensive Cars; hired a top Chicago Police Chief

D65 Spent Nearly a Million on Security Team, including $100k+ on New Ford Explorers in 2022

In my story on Dr. Horton’s inappropriate P-card use, one of the bills discussed was for $6,555.64 at Gerber Collision and Glass in June 2023. The bill (link here) was for a 2022 Black Ford Explorer. This is was strange:

1. I didn’t realize the District owned brand new Ford Explorers and;

2. Despite an insurance company listed on the bill, it appears that the District paid the full amount in cash on the district purchasing card.

I pulled a copy of the Secretary of State registration, showing the vehicle was registered in September 2022. I also purchased the Carfax report on the vehicle - it was listed as being in an accident on 2/5/2023. Since the bill was in June 2023, this was probably the accident.

I submitted a FOIA to the City of Evanston, to see if the accident occurred in Evanston - and it did - you can read the police report. According to the police report, it was a fender bender at Valli Produce.

The driver caught me by surprise - it was someone named Ernest Cato. Mr. Cato was a former top cop in the Chicago Police Department. In fact, he was a finalist in 2020 to be the Chief of Chicago Police. Mr. Cato resigned abruptly from the Chicago Police on September 16th, 2022 (remember that date). I reached out to Mr. Cato several times for this story and received no reply.

The police report lists the accident as February 5th, 2023 - a Sunday - it set off all the red flags. Why was the vehicle being driven on a weekend? What was the accident? Why did they pay cash? Why was it being driven by a former top CPS Cop? I reached out to the District;

At the time of the incident, Mr. Cato served as District 65’s Assistant Manager of Prevention and Special Response and as a member of our safety team. Mr. Cato has since left District 65 and the position no longer exists.

The incident in question occurred during school hours on Thursday, February 2, 2023, when Mr. Cato was driving the vehicle on District business. We recognize there is a discrepancy in the police report which we believe may have inadvertently reflected that the accident took place on a Sunday. We encourage you to reach out to Commander Glew at EPD if there are any follow-up questions as it relates to police matters.

If not in use for District 65 purposes, safety team vehicles are locked on weekends at the District 65 warehouse. The police report notes Valli Produce (1910 Dempster St.) as the location, but we do want to note that the warehouse is directly adjacent to the grocery store (2017 Greenleaf St.).

I followed up and reached out to the police, who confirmed that the police report likely includes a typo recorded during intake. According to the Evanston Police, it is with high probability that the incident did occur February 2nd 2023 (a Thursday). Of course, it’s hard to know for sure - there wasn’t any documentary evidence I was able to obtain to confirm this.

District Paid Cash Instead of Insurance

District 65 participates in an insurance pool for things like auto insurance, it’s called CLIC and you can see it listed on the accident report. However, the District never submitted this to insurance and just ate the $6,555.64 for seemingly no good reason.

The District provided a comment on this, which I’ve included below.

The purchase as well as the incident in question took place under a former administration; therefore, we cannot speak to their intent or thought process in regard to the purchase nor the decision to pay for the vehicle damages out of local funds rather than submitting a claim. Please note that the car was insured. We can say, however, that under the current administration it is the recommendation of our new CFO that an insurance claim would be made for damages of this magnitude.

But this still leaves open a ton of questions - why did the District purchase brand new vehicles? Was the Board notified of these purchases?

Phoenix Security

Around August 2021 Dr. Horton began receiving a 24/7 security detail from Phoenix Security. You can see the first of the approximately $50,000/month bills was paid by District 65 in October 2021.

The District hires Phoenix Security to do other work, including warehouse security - they normally pay Phoenix around $50,000 to $100,000 per year. But in school year 2022 (July 2021-June 2022), they paid a considerable amount more. It was probably around $500,000 in total for 10 months of 24/7 security.

The the 24/7 security was terminated after reporting by Evanston Now in June 2022.

I’d like to address one thing regarding threats — I’ve spent almost two years researching this topic. Here is an inventory that begins in the peak of COVID and ends in 2021.

• 8/6/2020 - Email sent to D65 Board from a dude named Christian Eades, where he says “something wicked is coming for you” in response to a FOX News Story.

• 9/15/2020 - D65 files police reports about mail they receive, including weird religious postcards.

• 1/9/2021 - Board Member Biz Lindsay-Ryan calls police after she finds a defaced Christmas Card in her car and cites the car was rifled through. You can read the police report. The police closed the case. The board put out a statement.

• 5/6/2021 - The District filed a police report regarding an email saying, “you people are disgusting open up the schools”

• 6/24/2021 - The District files a police report regarding an incident on 6/21/2021 where Dr. Horton claims a rear window on his car was smashed. It’s not clear why he waited three days to file the report.

• 7/8/2021 - District 65 files a police report regarding voicemails detailed in this police report. The Board puts out a statement on the voicemails and his car window.

• 8/9/2021 - The police review the voicemails finding no threats and close the case.

• 11/4/2021 - The District has a parent arrested for harassment for sending emails detailed in this police report. The charges against the parent are subsequently dropped.

Also, I’ve written about this before, Dr. Horton publicly claimed multiple times that a parent showed up at his house with a gun as justification of the security. From his exit interview;

Dr. Horton: "Well, on the record, and the media did not cover this, and that's OK. There was a parent who came to my house -- my home, threatening me with a gun, right? They got arrested and then all these things happened, right? But the media will say it didn't or they'll not mention that. See, you didn't know it. But I don't say this because I want sympathy. I'm saying these things so when I have that security, that's why the security was there.

I have found absolutely no evidence of this event occurring. I’ve submitted FOIA requests to both the Evanston and Skokie Police Departments, I’ve interviewed insiders, I’ve read every single police report regarding his cases, reached out to Dr. Horton, and I’ve even interviewed parents who have had alleged conflicts with the District. If this event occurred, it is not documented anywhere.

District 65’s Internal Security Operation

A month after losing his Phoenix Security detail, Dr. Horton went to the Board with plans to form a security operation inside of District 65. The Evanston Roundtable wrote detailed coverage on the story;

• 7/13/2022 - District 65 board discusses new security measures

• 7/13/2022 - District 65 board greenlights new security positions

• 9/15/2022 - District 65 rolls out new security initiatives 

These initiatives were quite extensive; they involved hiring 16 building concierges for $480,000 per year and two $110,000 positions titled, “Manager of Prevention and Special Response.” It also involved engaging with three security software vendors. One of the roles was filed by Mr. Cato; he started on 10/17/2022, briefly after his surprise exit from the Chicago Police Department.

The new security team would be funded through two mechanisms - ending the outsourced private security and terminating a relationship with a vendor that provided substitute teachers, ESS. The Roundtable wrote;

According to Horton, the district will fund the security measures and pay the salaries of the new employees by reducing private security costs and bringing substitute teacher training and onboarding in-house

According to the CFO at the time, the substitute teacher program would be brought in house with three additional staff members.

By bringing that operation in-house and hiring three staff to run that operation, the district will realize a savings of approximately 1.1 million, which is being used to fund the increase in safety and security staffing,” he said in an email to the RoundTable.

I’ve written about this particular trade-off before - the person brought in to manage the substitute teacher program was Dr. Turner’s sister. On top of that, it’s debatable whether this plan even worked - in last year’s budget the District went $2.8 million dollars over budget in the “Agency Service / Temp Help” line item. So are taxpayers paying for the security team and the in-house sub program and an outside vendor? 😬

Total Spend: $3.7 million, over-budget by $2.8 million

If so, the District managed to take a $1.1 million dollar contract with a vendor and replace it with 3 staffers doing temp help, 16 concierges, 2 head security staff, 3 security software vendors, and then ended up paying for an agency anyway at 2.5x the cost? 😵‍💫

On top of that, the District purchased …

Fancy New Cars with Capital Funds

Let’s go back to the original subject of this story - the vehicles. As part of this security initiative, on August 31, 2022 District 65 went to Rick Ridings Ford and purchased two brand new Ford Explorers at a cost of $103,793.00¹. You can view the FOIA’ed purchase receipts here.

Here’s a photo of the vehicles (the license plates match the registrations). They’re nice cars with rear tinted windows - considerably nicer than the Ford Explorers driven by the Evanston Police Department. According to the Secretary of State, these vehicles are still owned by District 65.

The Vehicles in Question

In my FOIA request, the District provided the following comment.

Included as part of the records is a memo “Changes to the 2022-23 Tentative Budget” presented as part of a September 2022 meeting packet – pg. 2 mentions a ‘vehicle replacement purchase’. Also attached as a record is the January 2023 Building & Grounds report (pg. 12) which provides fleet update.

This is a little misleading - you can view the September memo which detailed that capital funds were used for these vehicles, labeled as “vehicle replacement purchase”. ²

You can view the statement from 2023 mentioned, which details purchasing a 2021 Ford Transit but omits specific mention of the two Ford Explorers. Other than these two references to and a line item on the list of bills, the Board was not specifically notified of this vehicle purchase. Technically, the Board didn’t really even see the purchase until the November 14, 2022 board meeting - 2.5 months after the vehicle purchase due to consistent delays in financial reporting.

Large transactions were hard to find because of the missing decimal points

Given that Dr. Horton has a very similar vehicle and driver at his new job, I inquired whether it was used for this purpose and/or whether it was used for any personal business. The District replied;

This vehicle was not related to Dr. Horton. It was used by our Safety, Climate, and Athletics Department (Safety, Operations, and Athletics Department at the time) for District business. Dr. Horton did not have a District-issued personal vehicle or driver during his time in District 65. Administrators do not use District vehicles in their personal capacity.

I also inquired whether these vehicles are used to drive Dr. Turner around town as folks have suggested this to me. The District replied;

The vehicles are used for a wide range of purposes, all under the umbrella of increased safety and efficient use of time and resources. This includes: safety checks before and after school, to transport our safety team as first responders when there is a school-based crisis, home visits to students in crisis, and occasional transportation for administrators to support district and school-related travel within the community.

For example, over the past two years, Dr. Turner has welcomed staff back during District 65’s Institute Days by visiting each school. She greets staff, addresses needs and supports for the year, and expresses gratitude for the work ahead. In the 2023-2024 school year these 18 visits were done over the course of one day; this year they were split over two days. Nonetheless, these are quick visits on a tight schedule. To maximize her time spent with staff and create efficiency, a member of the D65 Safety team drove her and other members of the cabinet team using a district vehicle.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

1. $17 per District 65 child went to pay for these vehicles.

2. The Foster School could sure use some of those capital funds right now!