Will someone clear this up for me? Here’s what I have cobbled together to explain how the Lighthouse District became the Dumpster Fire District. We have (yes, still present tense) a superintendent that fleeced the community’s taxpayers. That, however, could not have happened by a single person. There was abundant help from the either com…
Will someone clear this up for me? Here’s what I have cobbled together to explain how the Lighthouse District became the Dumpster Fire District. We have (yes, still present tense) a superintendent that fleeced the community’s taxpayers. That, however, could not have happened by a single person. There was abundant help from the either complicit or incompetent decisions made by cronies and school board. The community should be demanding the immediate removal of all of the people who directed this or helped in the decline of the district. The teachers did not do this. The students did not do this. The parents did not do this. Corrupt, complicit and incompetent people knowingly did this. Remove them, don’t ask them to fix the problem they couldn’t figure out they created.
In terms of the people responsible, it is the board--largely the 2019-2020 board who were most responsible. This would be Suni Kartha, Anya Taynavutti, Candance Chow, Rebecca Mendoza, Biz, Sergio, and Joey.
That was the crew that broke precedent by hiring a superintendent in the dark without any public input. That was the crew that hired Horton in early 2020. That was the crew that--before hiring him-- hid from the public his background as someone with no experience running a district and who owed tens of thousands of dollars related to his real estate business.
In his exit interview, Horton said he was asked by the Board before he started in July 2020 to find funding for a new school.
There had been no public discussion at all during this period about building a new school.
To be fair, Chow voted for Horton and endorsed the secretive hiring process but left the board in early 2020 and was replaced by Soo La Kim.
But that crew set this whole thing in motion with the original sin of hiring Horton and charging him with a task that he totally flubbed.
Don’t forget all the administrators under Horton who enabled this 💩 day in and day out. Every one of them is culpable and if they’re still working for the district they should not only be given their walking papers, but they should all be investigated.
That is another thing that blows me away. The CFO support staff still works here, they have been pulling bad numbers while under the CFO and after he left. WHY do they still work for the district? WHY doesn't the board care? Aren't they angry that those people "lied" to them?
Anya Taynaavutti the alleged author of the Lady Whistledown letter! The former president of our school board! That letter that published addresses and cost of homes that supported other candidates. You can't make this stuff up. It's like the movie Mean Girls with the Burn Book. Except we are adults not teenagers.
This is a good overall summary but probably worth noting how early Joey and Sergio specifically entered the arena (2017), given they're still around. If Sergio somehow sticks around his entire term he'll have done TEN years...
Also just throwing it out there, we should probably take anything Horton said in an exit interview with a massive grain of salt. It's definitely plausible but without something to corroborate that (or maybe someone already did?) it's hard to fully rely on his account of things.
I acknowledge that Horton is liar and an unreliable narrator; BUT how else can we account for his making a new school a major focus of his administration?
Especially given the ideological dispositions of Taynavutti, Kartha, and the rest of them? My understanding is that there were some professional ties between Taynavutti and Horton before he was hired. And why break precedent and have a secretive search?
Henry Wilkins--Mya's spouse--had been working on the STEM School idea for a few years before Horton was hired. Check his letter to the editor below where he says Biz was telling him to work on the idea in 2019 before Horton was even hired.
A new school was clearly on the minds of the board when Horton was hired so it is not unreasonable that he was telling the truth in the exit interview.
Given the current debacle at Bessie Rhodes, it is also interesting to remember that Mya Wilkins was an early opponent of TWI at the school, so her enthusiastic support for shutting it down as a board member should not be surprising:
Yeah, Horton and Tanyavutti worked together in AUSL (as did Turner). I'm not sure how well they knew each other - but he was a principal and she was a "network advisor" according to her LinkedIn. I'm not sure how closely they worked together if at all but it wasn't a huge organization.
I didn't appreciate how much push back there was to Bessie Rhodes back in 2017 and how it was viewed by some of the equity folks as a zero sum with the Fifth Ward School. Good background. Somehow we managed to find the worst possible outcome.
Will someone clear this up for me? Here’s what I have cobbled together to explain how the Lighthouse District became the Dumpster Fire District. We have (yes, still present tense) a superintendent that fleeced the community’s taxpayers. That, however, could not have happened by a single person. There was abundant help from the either complicit or incompetent decisions made by cronies and school board. The community should be demanding the immediate removal of all of the people who directed this or helped in the decline of the district. The teachers did not do this. The students did not do this. The parents did not do this. Corrupt, complicit and incompetent people knowingly did this. Remove them, don’t ask them to fix the problem they couldn’t figure out they created.
In terms of the people responsible, it is the board--largely the 2019-2020 board who were most responsible. This would be Suni Kartha, Anya Taynavutti, Candance Chow, Rebecca Mendoza, Biz, Sergio, and Joey.
That was the crew that broke precedent by hiring a superintendent in the dark without any public input. That was the crew that hired Horton in early 2020. That was the crew that--before hiring him-- hid from the public his background as someone with no experience running a district and who owed tens of thousands of dollars related to his real estate business.
In his exit interview, Horton said he was asked by the Board before he started in July 2020 to find funding for a new school.
There had been no public discussion at all during this period about building a new school.
To be fair, Chow voted for Horton and endorsed the secretive hiring process but left the board in early 2020 and was replaced by Soo La Kim.
But that crew set this whole thing in motion with the original sin of hiring Horton and charging him with a task that he totally flubbed.
Don’t forget all the administrators under Horton who enabled this 💩 day in and day out. Every one of them is culpable and if they’re still working for the district they should not only be given their walking papers, but they should all be investigated.
That is another thing that blows me away. The CFO support staff still works here, they have been pulling bad numbers while under the CFO and after he left. WHY do they still work for the district? WHY doesn't the board care? Aren't they angry that those people "lied" to them?
Anya Taynaavutti the alleged author of the Lady Whistledown letter! The former president of our school board! That letter that published addresses and cost of homes that supported other candidates. You can't make this stuff up. It's like the movie Mean Girls with the Burn Book. Except we are adults not teenagers.
I don't believe she is the author but you can read the document yourself:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y_hPZJ_Fz_VEjGyhpmjTjH6MXx4p9C3f/view
I'm hoping to get a cool title in this upcoming cycle
Perhaps it was a collective of people from the Equity Army, but she kept sharing it on the D65 page over and over.
She was involved —without a doubt. Along with all the predictable devoted acolytes. You can’t make this shit up. 🤡
This is a good overall summary but probably worth noting how early Joey and Sergio specifically entered the arena (2017), given they're still around. If Sergio somehow sticks around his entire term he'll have done TEN years...
Also just throwing it out there, we should probably take anything Horton said in an exit interview with a massive grain of salt. It's definitely plausible but without something to corroborate that (or maybe someone already did?) it's hard to fully rely on his account of things.
I acknowledge that Horton is liar and an unreliable narrator; BUT how else can we account for his making a new school a major focus of his administration?
Especially given the ideological dispositions of Taynavutti, Kartha, and the rest of them? My understanding is that there were some professional ties between Taynavutti and Horton before he was hired. And why break precedent and have a secretive search?
Henry Wilkins--Mya's spouse--had been working on the STEM School idea for a few years before Horton was hired. Check his letter to the editor below where he says Biz was telling him to work on the idea in 2019 before Horton was even hired.
A new school was clearly on the minds of the board when Horton was hired so it is not unreasonable that he was telling the truth in the exit interview.
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2021/08/16/henry-wilkins-open-letter-to-the-district-65-school-board/
Given the current debacle at Bessie Rhodes, it is also interesting to remember that Mya Wilkins was an early opponent of TWI at the school, so her enthusiastic support for shutting it down as a board member should not be surprising:
https://evanstonnow.com/parents-fight-back-against-plans-for-bessie-rhodes/
Yeah, Horton and Tanyavutti worked together in AUSL (as did Turner). I'm not sure how well they knew each other - but he was a principal and she was a "network advisor" according to her LinkedIn. I'm not sure how closely they worked together if at all but it wasn't a huge organization.
https://www.foiagras.com/p/academy-for-urban-school-leadership
I didn't appreciate how much push back there was to Bessie Rhodes back in 2017 and how it was viewed by some of the equity folks as a zero sum with the Fifth Ward School. Good background. Somehow we managed to find the worst possible outcome.