District 150 recently announced numerous reassignments of school principals. They are listed on the district’s website, but as a service to my readers, I’m reprinting them here:
Name Current School 2011-2012 Appointment John Wetterauer Charter Oak Charter Oak Jane Cushing Franklin Franklin Kevin Curtin Garfield Irving Annette Coleman Glen Oak Glen Oak Veralee Smith Harrison Harrison Jamie Brown Hines Hines Michael Barber Irving Rolling Acres Patsy Santen Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson Ken Turner Kellar Kellar Nicole Woods Northmoor Northmoor Renee Andrews Whittier Whittier Angela Stockman Woodrow Wilson Trewyn Diann Duke Valeska Woodruff Career and Technical Center Tom Blumer Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge Cindy Janovetz Columbia Manual Chief Turnaround Officer Ursula Brown Lincoln Lincoln Michael Plunkett Lindbergh Lindbergh Scott Montgomery Mark Bills Woodrow Wilson Deloris Turner Rolling Acres Retiring Noly Branscumb Roosevelt Roosevelt James Jemilo Sterling Jamieson Eric Thomas Trewyn Knoxville Center for Success Dave Obergfel Von Steuben Retiring Joan Wojcikewych Washington Director of Curriculum for Peoria High School Sharon Kherat Manual Manual Randy Simmons Peoria High School Von Steuben Karen Orendorff Jamieson Retiring Paul Monrad Peoria Alternative High School Director of Student Affairs Brandon Caffey Greeley Assistant Principal at Richwoods High School Donna O’Day Knoxville Center for Success Sterling Additional Appointments Name Current School 2011-2012 Appointment Laura Rodgers Trewyn, Assistant Principal Principal, Mark Bills Dave Poehls Richwoods, Assistant Principal Principal, Washington Gifted Brett Elliott Richwoods, Assistant Principal Principal, Peoria High School Cindy Clark Peoria High School, Assistant Principal Principal, Richwoods High School
Can the board approve a contract before it is signed? Common sense seems to indicate that the board should approve a contract before it is offered to an employee.
What is going on with the 150 website? Why have all the minutes been deleted? I will assume they are still working on the site–but I don’t understand why material that was already on the site should have to be removed.
I don’t normally comment. I guess that makes me a “troll.” But I felt the need to finally.
All of you that think that you have no vested interest in D150…if you live in the district…YOU DO! If you don’t, then you don’t have a right to complain about it. End of discussion.
If you live in D150, then effect the change. Get involved. Volunteer at the school. Substitute teach if you can. Anyone can sit and whine about the state of the district. Leaders get involved and do something about it. Peoria High School had a community forum to seek parents to get involved and be on committees to effect change on Thursday night. MAYBE (and this is generous) 20 parents showed up. But there are more than that to show up for ANYTHING else. If you don’t act, you lose the right to complain.
Which brings me to my next point. All of you complaining about the union elections and the union officers. Sit and complain about the low turnout all you want. If you don’t act, you can’t complain. And furthermore, I have had EXCELLENT support from the union leadership. They put in hours that no one sees and I have been well represented. The MINORITY must have not gotten their dream job where they have 2 kids all day with an aide and a student teacher and a principal that adores them. They call it work for a reason. Do it and quit complaining. If you do, you will be fine.
I am done. Thank you for allowing me to post on your site.
Sharon… you are defending the indefensible, again. OutsiderNow is correct… and no amount of “look how great schools used to be” will convince anyone that schools are worth a dime today.
Give up the “teachers pay their own salary” dodge, too. It is a terrible argument that suggests that anyone and everyone pays their own salary in some sense or another… I pay taxes that build roads and supplement oil companies and defend this country’s economic interests so that my customers can buy gas and drive to my business so I can make a living… (It also ignore those that live outside a school district who actually pay OTHER teachers’ salaries…)
We have had this discussion before… there is NO DEFENSE for the school system… the administrators, the teachers, the counselors and the colleges training teachers and administrators, The State and Fed bureaucrats… the entire system is dysfunctional. Like any dysfunctional family the children that are acting out are probably the healthiest ones, and those that are enabling the system to continue its dysfunctional behavior are the real problems…
“I realize you do not see the value to society in educating young people whose parents cannot afford a private education.”
Here you have moved the goal posts again and now attacking O.N. personally. The point you keep forgetting is that the SYSTEM IS DYSFUNCTIONAL AND NO AMOUNT OF FIXING CAN CHANGE THAT. There is WAAAAAY too much money invested in it continuing to fail to even to attempt to change it.
“This is the problem with running educational institutions like businesses.” Yes, that’s better… and who are the customers? Local businesses that need soft, compliant, pay check dependent employees that can work simple machines. For them, the school system works PERFECTLY. Just the right amount of people succeed in the system for the “good jobs”.
“Volunteer at the school. Substitute teach if you can.”
Are you kidding me? Why not volunteer at the Administration building? Why not volunteer in the State legislature? (Like they would let volunteers in on their secret meetings… they’d have to share their catered breakfasts and lunches) The only thing one does by volunteering is getting set up for law suit… ask Lee Wenger. A lawsuit filed based on the complaint filed by a SCHOOL EMPLOYEE. I have done the “substitute” thing and it was a total joke… replacing foreign language teachers in languages I had never studied, and still knowing more than the students who were in their third year of study… replacing teachers that on a regular basis were gone… I mean once a week or more… and watching as discipline problems (which are worse for subs) are ignored, and sent right back to the classrooms…
The school system is a TOTAL waste of money (except for the minimum wage jobs it creates…)
“They call it work for a reason.”
Yeah… because if they called it education, they’d be lying. So they call it “teaching” or “learning” which we all know, means training. It is a Behavioral Psych term.
Sharon – Thank you for defending the poor kids. While, yes, I would agree that many times it is the kids on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder that cause a lot of the disruptions in the schools, I don’t believe that being poor automatically makes you stupid or uneducatable (sp?). So if I’m reading “outsider now” correctly, only rich kids deserve an education? Really? What are we supposed to do with all those poor, stupid kids? I mean they need a basic education to be able to count change at their minimum wage job, right? And, yes, before anyone points it out, the computer tells them how much change but even then they need a basic understanding of it or $1.81 will mean nothing to them.
Being poor just means you may have a few more challenges in the learning process but don’t tell me the kids are unable to be educated. I was one of those poor kids once and managed to graduate with decent grades and even went on to college. I get frustrated with the lack of performance but I blame the parents as much as the students. We have parents that send their kids to school with no breakfast, dirty clothes, poor manners and expect the school to fix all that. I have to give my late mother kudos. She may have been a single mom but she made sure we were dressed properly and had a good breakfast. She also made sure we did our homework every day and a decent meal every night. She didn’t sell her food stamps (this was long before the Link Card!) to get cash for whatever purpose and she managed her money so it lasted the month rather than running out mid-month and then having to hit every food pantry in town. So, for me, I have a difficult time with those than want to use poverty as an excuse for poor performance in schools.
Outsidernow: I don’t know you because you hide behind a screen name so you can take cheap shots at me, that’s OK but if you were standing in front of me and took cheap shots at my family, you would have a fat lip to match your fat head. But, so much for name calling as people like you, no one can change your point of view. It is what it is. My kids never ever ate shit on a single and you aren’t good enough for the south end. Now if you have a problem, you obliviously know who I am, contact me and we’ll take about your attitude adjustment. Your analogy is wrong with the fence and in fact the stupidest one I have heard. School districts are a part of a community just like the police and fire and who knows, you may never ever use the fire services either. I never have. People that come here to live look at schools first, property values second. How go the schools, goes the property values whether or not someone is building a fence around it. If you can’t see the value of a community supporting public schools, well, then you truly blind. Private schools aren’t all that great either and suffer the same problems with money.
Kcdad, you are so right about being a substitute. The kids are totally out of control and run the schools in Peoria. It isn’t worth it to be a sub as no one listens to the teacher whether you are a sub or the regular teacher. You send students to the office for discipline and they are put right back in the classroom. Students will tell you they will be back in a few minutes, they don’t care if they get sent to the office as this gets them out of the classroom. Also the texting that so many parents do to their children during the school day and then the kids text back or text others, is so out of control. It doesn’t matter if you take the phone away because these students of today are so smart, they carry several phones on them. The dress code and the cell phone policy are a big joke in Dist 150. No serious consequences for anything. And the majority of the parents are just like their children. They get irate if you tell them not to text their kids or if their phone gets taken away. They continue to do it anyway. So a teacher spends approximately 9/10 of the class period on disciplining and 1/10 on teaching. How can students learn?
Kcdad, I am sorry, of course, to disagree with you, but you just don’t get to be the only great teacher in Peoria. There are many who successfully teach Peoria’s children every day. Your teaching success isn’t tied to BCLB testing (in fact, no social studies teacher has to meet those standards)–until you have to be judged by the NCLB standard, then you can’t criticize those who have that impossible hurdle to jump. Yes, of course, the system is broken in many ways–your idea to scrape it is, of course, extreme. However, those who have never spent time in a classroom (or couldn’t wait to get out) are now trying to fix the system–it will be even more broken than before because they don’t understand the real problems and are seeking the wrong solutions to their idea of the problems.
I do agree with you that the system works just fine for those businesses (and there are many such as fast food restaurants) that depend on unskilled, underpaid labor to make their millions in profit. Also, I agree about the way substitutes are treated–both by students and the administration (and probably some teachers, also). My cousin has just started subbing in another nearby city. She asked me the other day if I realized how underappreciated substitutes are. Teachers who do not leave understandable lesson plans and seating charts are at fault.
Leslie Smith, thank you for recognizing my defense of the young people to whom I devoted my whole teaching career–and to all of them I owe so much; they brought joy to my life and still do. The southend of Peoria has produced many, many successful citizens. Many see me as being negative about District 150. I never, never blame the young people–even their bad behaviors have been taught to them at home and permitted at the schools (the school administration that allows these behaviors and has not found any viable alternative for these young people who need to be educated but not in a regular school setting–until they can adhere to acceptable standards of behavior). This situation could have been controlled 40 years ago–it now will take more effort.
Dear aghast,
From what I have heard, I do agree that there is an overwhelming amount of parent apathy in the schools today. However, I do have to wonder if some of the Central parents have heard how many of the Manual parents on the restructuring committee were treated and that has made them cynical.
Maddy, you are right. Also, the Peoria High turnout would have been greater two weeks ago, but Dr. Lathan cancelled the meeting so that this meeting would take place after the decision to replace the principal had already been voted on by the BOE. She was unwilling to face criticism or any ideas contrary to her already-made up mind. I suppose that could be considered more honest than meeting with parents, knowing full well your mind was already made up.
Sharon, of course there are good teachers… they just aren’t allowed to be good teachers.
The minutes are there now and Michelle’s and Brad’s appointments were approved by the BOE July 26th effective 8/16/10. Then the BOE approved Michelle’s contract August 9th. Did I hear that her atty is the spouse of a former D150 employee and very recent consultant? Interesting.
Emtronics there was a time in the US that many police, fire and military organizations were all privately run or funded. The fact that you seem to have a limited view of history does not change the bases of the arguement. It dosnt have to be a fence it can be any service that is “provided” to you by a government body. Who knows if fifty years from now the city has decided that for the good of the community the city should inspect and assemble all backyard fences to insure the safety of the citizens of Peoria and that it is a service provided for your tax money. Ask people from pre depression era America about a time when there was no such thing as a federally insured bank account. If you go back to the civil war if you had enough money you could make yourself an officer and field a regiment on the battlefield if you wanted. In the current time period that seems crazy but in the context of history look what has changed in 150 years or so. Im not saying these things are good or bad but if you told someone in 1928 that the government was going to take some of their money and put it in a special account that they could access at retirement they would probablly think you were crazy.
I never said poor kids do not deserve an education. I said that ones socio economic situation has more to do with their future earning potential then a school and then added that areas with higher socio economic student bodies tend to have better school districts. It dosnt mean the school is any better it just supports the statistic that the school has less of an impact on a student then their home situation and that they probablly would end up “a productive citizen” whether the school underperformed or was the best in the state.
In short morton, dunlap wherever are not better schools they just have a higher socio economic body to draw from which makes them appear to be better schools. Until d150 can change its student body it will continue to be outperformed by the surrounding districts.
What idiot would buy a home, invest in improving that home and then don’t care about the quality of services provided by the tax base, like police, fire, and schools. I guess the same one that would compare building a fence and then demanding payment from the land owner.
By the way you threw the first punch dick
Outsidernow, you (your children or grandchildren) have not told us how you received your education–public or private?
private from k through college.
Looks like Michelle’s lawsuit is about to be history. The good thing is taxpayers won’t have to pay out a bundle, the bad thing is I think Michelle did not get a fair shake from Lathan or the board. If she was released for the same reason as McArdle (the claus in the contract) then why is Julie’s suit still going on?
The way I read the article, the door to Michelle’s suit is still open. As far as why Julie’s case is ongoing–she had damning evidence to support her claim that she was terminated “without cause” immediately after blowing the whistle on her supervisor.
I don’t know any of the legal recourses Michelle might or might not have. However, I do not understand how a contract can be worth much if it has a “without cause” clause. Isn’t that the same as not having a contract at all. Also, the District is being very cagey here. Michelle hasn’t been fired yet. Therefore, why shouldn’t she expect her salary to remain the same until she is fired no matter what position she holds? I don’t understand the legal coniving that is going on with putting her in a teaching position and then firing her in June.
It’s obvious this is all about people on power trips AEB moving the principal late into the year and appointing a stranger to hand out diplomas at graduation. It’s not about the children. It’s about a quest for power.
There is NO comparison between Michelle and Julie’s cases, except they are both against D150.
The district is using the same defense in both cases, and that is the contracts that include “without cause” both of these people signed.
Whatever you think Taxpayer! lol
hmmmmm you can be as condescending as you like, but the fact remains Julie McArdle was dismissed without cause according to her contract, and that is the district’s defense. Do I personally believe that McArdle was let go for other reasons? Yes, but that is not what the district is saying. So it remains, that both women were dismissed because of clauses in their contracts that allows the district to do so.
http://peoriachronicle.com/2009/04/29/district-150-releases-audit-report-statement-on-mcardle/
“DISTRICT STATEMENT – For Immediate Release – Wednesday, April 29, 2009
First, we need to clarify that Julie McArdle was not fired. Her contract was terminated without cause, pursuant to her employment contract.”
In both both cases, the District and/or the administrator/superintendent who initiated the action of terminating the contract hides behind the privacy statement. The fired employee supposedly benefits from the right to privacy. However, the “terminators” benefit from the privacy in that they never have to reveal the cause of the termination. The “cause” might reveal more about the terminator than it does about the ones terminated. These two situations are proof of what will happen if tenure is ended and teachers can be fired “without cause.” Personality clashes all over the place will be the “cause!”
There is no such thing as “without cause”. That clause was made up by a shifty corporate attorney……
Taxpayer: you are aware that McArdle’s lawsuit is in FEDERAL Court, aren’t you? Ungurait’s is in the state court. BIG DIFFERENCE. Oh, if McArdle’s case had no merit, don’t you think it would have been dismissed long ago? Also, Mary Davis still has “put off” her own criminal court date what, 5-6 times now. That says a lot. Possibly, me no want to go to jail.
It is very obvious by these posts that most people do not understand the justice system on the civil side as well as the criminal side.
Wow, since you must be the expert in legal matters please enlighten us.
It is easy to make a statement that some do not understand the legal system. However, not revealing what you do or do not know about the legal system suggests that you might not know that much either.
Go Sharon!!!
Malice–this might be the thread for which you are looking.
Blessed Easter to all Chronicle readers.
Thank you “2 cents”. The point I wanted to raise/share with readers was to ask if they have ever sat down with Dr. Michelle Ungurait and talked with her? Well, I have and I was VERY impressed with her! She is intelligent, articulate and a winner for D150! In fact I even mellowed my opinion of Dr. Latham that she (Latham) had recruited such a high caliber individual to come to D150 as the second in command! Trust me, Peorians – talk with Dr. Latham and then with Dr. Ungurait and then vote on which one needs to win and which one needs to go packing!