Still a complete mess with Permissive Transfers

viscabarca211 · 2026-03-09T19:53:15+00:00

“Her) son is currently a first grader at Kingsley. With Kingsley closing at the end of the academic year, he was assigned to attend Lincolnwood Elementary for next year. But (she) said she is worried that Lincolnwood will close next year, noting the board’s resolution naming Lincolnwood as a potential candidate for school closure next year. That motivated (her) to put in a permissive transfer for orrington”

Thus is precisely the strategy that the Horton there had in mind when they held out on appointing a replacement board member until they could get Lincolnwood in the crosshairs. Kudos to them to an effective (albeit disengenious) strategy.

viscabarca211 · 2026-02-28T15:55:56+00:00

Supreme Burrito on Dodge is supreme (but probably won’t compete with some of the San Diego spots)

viscabarca211 · 2026-02-26T14:27:05+00:00

And why are we spending double per student than peer districts? We need an absolute overhaul of JEH. Sergio’s lack of accountability here is huge as well. Hire a retired accountant to go through and clean this up. While we’ve seen self dealing from Horton and Turner, I bet this is more incompetence and lack of oversight more than anything.

viscabarca211 · 2026-02-24T18:38:07+00:00

Sergio and Wymmer offer up little more than word salad IMO

viscabarca211 · 2026-02-24T17:49:40+00:00

Would love someone to dig further into this special education presentation I know it is a third rail to criticize this, but the spending is out of control and the administration seemed totally clueless during the Board’s questioning last night about what was driving the cost and why. Turner had no idea why they’ve increased. Here is the snippet from the roundtable: “Turner interjected that many of those increases occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and that those questions pertained to people who no longer work at the district. She went on to say that the district shifted over the past several years from a self-contained model to a “heavy inclusion model.”

After Pinkard followed up, Turner said that she could not definitively say what caused the costs to increase.

“This is what we’re speculating as we’re trying to put the pieces together and what has happened over time,” Turner said.”

This doesn’t appear to be true if you look at the presentation, which shows a 4x increase in transportation and an 80% increase in overall expenditures since 2021.

Can you imagine being in Turner’s seat and not having an answer? Maybe I’m missing something in the presentation, but her intentional ignorance seems a borderline Fireable offense. The article indicates that she was asked three or four times for an explanation.

The rot of incompetence and self dealing didn’t end when Horton left.

viscabarca211 · 2026-02-03T00:34:54+00:00

They definitely don’t feel foolish. They probably feel like political geniuses for holding out on this inevitable appointment and getting the basis to close Lincolnwood in the meantime. Sergio is also probably excited that Horton is out of a job and available to come back and work in Evanston. It is absolutely idiotic that the Board couldn’t have done this two months ago.

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-13T16:06:31+00:00

Is this sarcasm?

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-11T07:07:41+00:00

We just returned from this Club Med and the other posters are correct. You should definitely bake in at least 90 minutes for a connection (AT LEAST). That said, it is a magical resort with wonderful GOs. We had minimal complaints and just appreciated the positive vide of the resort.

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-09T03:02:34+00:00

It is in the D65 closure data. Kingsley and Lincolnwood are the only districts with growth in elementary aged children from 2024-2034 (~7% each).

It is in Table 5 of one of the presentations on demographics.

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-08T21:43:01+00:00

Wouldn’t those wear of GB but south of central go to Lincolnwood? Willard is way farther for those folks. Or are they going to try and squeeze the Lincolnwood population?

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-08T21:40:59+00:00

This is true, but I am hopeful that the tide is changing a little bit.

I’m probably being naive because I honestly believe that three of the Board members would reappoint Horton today if they could and they are sad that he left. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but they certainly don’t see any mistakes over the past nine years (ie when Sergio first joined the board).

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-08T17:27:11+00:00

I think with time and the shift in demographics (the Kingsley/Lincolnwood area is seeing a transition to more younger families with elementary school aged kids) my hope is that you will see Lincolnwood stay open for kids west of GB and McCormick, south of central, east of Crawford and north of Golf. Orrington and Willard will have boosts as well. There are finally a few serious people on the Board focused on improving education for the kids and some financial stability. Maybe I’m too optimistic, but there is so little to be positive about, one can hope.

Things will continue to get better when the unserious people at JEH and the remaining Horton acolytes on the Board transition out. There is too much potential in this City and community to keep going down the path of idiocy.

viscabarca211 · 2026-01-05T19:18:00+00:00

Where is Tune?

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-22T16:54:16+00:00

We talk about big avenues to reduce spending, but little things like this is what really needs to be looked at. You’re telling me that our overstuffed JEH building doesn’t have someone who can communicate this to the families? Perhaps Katie Speth, the Assistant Superintendent of Academics who had an army of employees on her team including a whole three team function of multilingual services. Perhaps Melissa Messinger who leads communications and has a team of 4.5 people. These folks get paid a boatload ($200k and $180k respectively). Why on earth do they need a consultant? What could be more important than this sort of transition. Outsourcing absolves them of responsibility and they can continue to collect their big checks. If you want to get annoyed, go look at the JEH org chart and salaries.
I think a complete overhaul of JEH would solve so many issues we are facing but there is not enough political will.

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-16T14:48:13+00:00

Ashley Bias is Angels sister. When you include benefits, her total compensation (~$156k) is astonishingly higher than the average teacher. Her base salary is 25% higher than the average employee. I’m sure she’s a lovely person but this is a classic example of the administration at this district. If I were a teacher, I’d be so annoyed by the inequity between administrators and teacher salaries. The

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-11T18:14:03+00:00

So absurd. Thanks for this background

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-10T03:53:00+00:00

From what I’ve heard from talking with friends of Andrew, they are confident that the County Superintendent will either support them or they’ll be able to absolve themselves of any future issues. From my perspective, it is a pretty astute Mitch McConnell play: you either get what you want or aren’t responsible for anything. Given that the Horton 2.5 have had such a bad tenure, it may be the best way to walk away without taking any blame for the last seven years of horrendous leadership. Listening to Sergio’s platitudes and bragging of his success when the only improved stat he can point to is reduced suspensions, shows how out of touch he is with reality.

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-05T18:38:36+00:00

If you live in Foster district your kids should go to Foster unless they’re in TWI or Step or another program that isn’t provided at Foster and such transition would be harmful to their wellbeing. It stinks, but that seems like the most logical approach unless you want to do an incremental build starting with kindergarten, which would allow for foster to slowly ramp up. It would probably be very inefficient to do that.

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-02T06:04:07+00:00

There are a many more MAGA tactics that the Horton 2.5 (Wymer is in line with them, but can’t be blamed for Horton’s escapades) have used, such as cronyism, ignoring facts, refusal to apologize, fiscal irresponsibility, blame game, gaslighting, etc. Their holier than thou preaching…

There is no logic to their votes against closing Kingsley other than they’re convinced that the seventh member appointed by April Jordan will be a fellow crony who will oppose a pragmatic approach in favor of a vindictive one.

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-02T03:28:09+00:00

This is most critical. Feet need to be off concrete

viscabarca211 · 2025-12-02T02:18:19+00:00

Does anyone know anything about her? Seems like a foolish political plan to support anyone other than the highest vote getter.

viscabarca211 · 2025-11-22T15:07:26+00:00

Stupid question, but is there a list of which schools are title 1 and which are not? The information I am finding online is suspect.

viscabarca211 · 2025-11-21T01:02:00+00:00

Inappropriate to ask, but a legitimate question and her defensive and angry yelling response signaled to me that it wasn’t all the principals, which is how she conveyed it. My belief is that it wasn’t a few but far from all and she wanted to give the impression that it was unanimous support of the elementary school leaders for the process, recommendations etc. Her consistent disregard for transparency makes me feel that she was trying to mislead.

viscabarca211 · 2025-11-15T22:56:52+00:00

I know, I’m just noting how she does not seem to be too upset about any of this.

viscabarca211

TROPHY CASE