LW North Parent Tells Board, 'You Have Broken This Community'

—The following was a public comment made by Lincoln-Way North parent Jay Curatolo during the Sept. 10 board meeting.

Just a few short weeks ago, the majority of this board pushed forward with a decision that has had a profound and damaging impact on the entire Lincoln Way district.

Throughout the nightmare of these past few months, we have heard the terms integrity, trust, transparency, and disclosure. As a collective community, we have been engaged in a one-sided game, where you, the board, have been the only players, and we, the taxpayers, parents, and students, have been unwittingly played as fools. Throughout this process, you pretended to listen to our cries, patronizing us with a thinly-veiled charade - during which time, you unapologetically revealed your one-track intentions.

This district found itself within this quandary in the first place as the result of acting upon lofty speculation and projection. Yet when tasked to courageously move us into the future with hard factual numbers, you chose to rewind the clock, and base your decision again on a guess. You have blamed the state of Illinois at every turn for your own financial crisis, never once owning up to an ounce of responsibility for foolishly mismanaging our hard-earned taxpayer dollars. In what has become a picture perfect example of “How-NOT-to-operate-a-school-closing-procedure”, you arrogantly dismissed the conversation and feedback of our communities, as well as the input of competent professionals who are far more equipped than yourselves at making a decision of this magnitude. It has been made abundantly clear that your ENTIRE platform since the beginning of this mess can be reduced to the following two hidden proposals: One... Do everything in your power to close Lincoln Way North. And Two... Do everything in your power to save Lincoln Way Central.

Your zealous pursuit to close North was performed at breakneck pace, a runaway train on greased rails, all while you bent over backwards to protect the Central campus, a virtual money pit by comparison. We provided you with facts showing that North thrives as the ideal model of this district... facts you chose to ignore. We practically begged for an independent study to be done by outside parties. Instead, you rushed to the catastrophic decision of closing a brand new $100 million dollar school at lightning speed —a mere 100 days time—a decision with ramifications possibly affecting generations to come, made with absolutely no outside advice or expert influence. How convenient that only NOW at last night’s budget meeting, do you admit to being in over your head and are now considering professional and experienced consultation. How convenient that only NOW you have a moment of clarity to see that you need to act responsibly, AFTER you carelessly toyed with our taxpayer dollars, and needlessly uprooted the lives of thousands of students. The one and ONLY responsible choice that you can now make is to reverse your reckless and hurried decision to close a school, in order to allow the due process of objective analysis to take place, humbly accepting the guidance that this district has so desperately needed all along.

I refuse to accept the perception that we, the members of this community, are the ones who have driven a wedge between our schools. That distinction rests solely on your heads. Through your lack of transparency and your haste to get this done, you have broken this community. You made the wrong choice, the final straw in a pile of bad choices. You closed the wrong school, and we all know it. All you succeeded in doing was to awaken the sleeping giant within us. We as a community have long suspected a cover-up of secrets associated with this board, and your suspicious behavior has bred duplicity and mistrust. This board’s historic tendencies for making poor financial decisions will be put on full display, no longer capable of being buried in the shadows. Perhaps your worst error was underestimating us, and that may be your undoing.

We will not go away. We demand that you be held accountable. We will seek answers and we will find them. We will dig deeper, and if need be, we will expose you. And if you’re not yet willing to admit your cooperating role in the grave mistakes that have already been made, we’re here to inform you that you simply no longer have any choice in the matter.

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