Teachable Moments at D113

If you’ve been following the recent chain of events taking place at District 113, you’re likely aware that the Board hired a new Superintendent who resigned after it was discovered that she brought a fair amount of controversy with her from California. Her husband was a cyberbully, and offered multiple settlements to his victim - the first in the amount of $2900, the second in the amount of $35000. Dr. Kimbrel claims not to have known about what her husband was doing. A $2900 settlement? Maybe that’s believable, but when you get to offering someone $35000? Not believable in the slightest.

Then we came to find out that there was an unethical conflict of interest involving the search firm (HYA) that brought her to us. Dr. Kimbrel was an Associate of HYA! It was on her resume which was posted on the D113 website (albeit briefly, before being taken down and replaced with a different version that didn’t contain the HYA association); it was on her resume which was available on the ECRA website (HYA and ECRA recently merged); and it was in two separat slide decks posted approximately 20 days AFTER Dr. Kimbrel entered into the contract with D113. Even better, ECRA has performed surveys and other work for D113.

The HYA reps attempt to mitigate the unethical nature of this unholy conflict of interest by claiming that:

1. Dr. Kimbrel was never compensated by HYA
2. Dr. Kimbrel was only trained to be an Associate and never actually did any work for them
3. Dr. Kimbrel renounced her association with them before they presented her as a candidate.

#1 doesn’t relieve the ethical conflict in the least. She had a connection, and ”in” with the HYA people as one of their prior Associates, and that makes the relationship suspect.

#2 also doesn’t relieve the ethical conflict. Same reasoning as #1.

#3 Given that the relationship was apparently broken mere minutes prior to her being recommended for the position, this sill doesn’t relieve the ethical dilema. Perhaps if her relationship with HYA was 24 months or more prior, then we might be able to excuse it, but this was entirely too close to forgive.

Our Community was in an uproar over these issues, and rightly so. We expect and deserve better within the confines of D113, and we didn’t get it - at all.

So after apparent careful consideration, Dr. Kimbrel chose to resign. As she told me during the Meet ‘n Greet session at HPHS, ”this [wasn’t] her first rodeo”, so she rightly figured it’d be best to get out before things turned worse. She appealed to the D113 Board, and they granted her request.

That’s one teachable moment: Vet your candidates THOROUGHLY.

The other extremely important teachable moment is that: ETHICS MATTERS.

One would think that after this monumental debacle, which has reverberated all the way to the West Coast at Dr. Kimbrel’s home district in California and back that we would be extremely reticent to employ HYA/ECRA for anything else in our faire District ever again? We need to place a great deal of trust and have a great deal of confidence in a search firm that’s presenting superintendent candidates to us.

Candidates which we pay well over $250,000 in total compensation to.

Candidates which will help to shape and guide the young minds of our students.

Candidates which will set the tone for how business is conducted within our District.

Candidates which can help us to become a shining light of educational excellence, or drag us down into a black hole of derision.

So why, praytell, would we have any remaining confidence whatsoever in the firm (HYA) which tried to pass off Dr. Kimbrel and her baggage on us? Which made us look like fools? How can we be expected to trust these people no matter what they say, and why would we seek their advice on any matters whatsoever? I’ve seen comments about them on Facebook that they’re untrustworthy - maybe those comments are on-the-money, maybe not. Maybe HYA made a mistake, maybe they outright lied and we caught them.

One thing I do know is that we need several things:

1. To relieve ourselves of the burden that HYA/ECRA has become to our District. By continuing to associate with and employ these people, we subject our District and our Community to derision by persons throughout the Country. This is not conducive to presenting the image of Educational Excellence.
2. To have a lifetime ban on HYA/ECRA being employed by our District, or providing anything to our District.
   
3. To craft and promulgate a strong vendor ethics policy in our District. We should not have to deal with this nonsense ever again. And if some vendor does foist it upon us, we ought to get 100% of our money back as well as any legal costs we incur.
4. The Board should convene two school-wide assemblies - one at HPHS, and one at DHS where the Board informs the students of what happened during this unfortunate incident, what it ended up costing in time and money, why they took the action they did, and that ethics matters. This is a teachable moment, and as unfortunate as it is, we ought not to let it escape, rather we ought to use it to demonstrate to our students that the rules apply to all, and that sometimes, even though something is difficult, we do it because it’s the right thing to do. We’re District 113, we expect, demand, and require a high standard in our dealings, with consequences for all.

Some on the Board are educators, some are not. But all have a duty to educate our Students to become good members of the Community and Society. One way that we do that is by engaging in ethical behavior at all levels of the educational organization.

Please remember this and what I’ve said when you go vote for D113 School Board candidates. I’m David Greenberg,, I’m on the ballot for D113 School Board and I’d appreciate your vote as a mandate for Ethics, Honesty, and Fiscal Conservatism. Thank you for your support.