One week after voting to remove its president for alleged misconduct and performance deficiencies, the Calumet School District 132 board Thursday chose a replacement.
Karen Ivey, who had served as board president from May 2015 to April 2017, was reappointed to the post. Corliss Smith, who briefly ascended to the presidency upon removal of board president Patricia Carr earlier this month, was reappointed as vice president.
Carr, who was stripped of her board president title at the Jan. 11 meeting over what she claims are illegitimate and personal reasons, attempted to nominate an alternative to Ivey, but was rebuffed by her own nominee. Board member Ernestine Stover, who declined Carr’s nomination, said she did not want her name associated with “this mess,” referring to the board’s recent upheaval.
As a result, the board voted 4-3 to appoint Ivey as president. According to her bio on the district website, Ivey, who declined comment on her appointment, has served on the Calumet school board since 2001.
During her previous tenure as board president, Ivey, along with other board members at the time, came under fire from residents for attending out-of-state conferences on the district’s dime.
A 2017 Daily Southtown investigation into the school board’s spending on conferences found that Ivey had attended three out-of-state conferences within the past year and accounted for about one-third of the $34,092 that the seven-member board had spent on conferences between April 2016 and March 2017.
Carr, who had been critical of the board’s spending on conferences, replaced Ivey as president at the board’s reorganization in late April 2017, days after the Southtown article was published. Synathia Harris, another critic of the board’s conference spending who was elected last year on a reform platform, was appointed secretary at the same meeting.
The board majority has since spent more than $20,000 to launch misconduct investigations into both Carr and Harris, who claim the queries are politically motivated.
The first board-initiated probe into the pair was conducted by an independent investigator who failed to substantiate the charges against either, concluding that their behavior did not amount to harassment, according to a copy of his report obtained by the Daily Southtown.
Shortly after the independent investigator provided the board his report on Carr and Harris, it voted to launch a second misconduct investigation — this time into only Carr — to be conducted by James Petrungaro, the board attorney whose law firm Carr had sought unsuccessfully to replace four months earlier.
None of the accusations leveled at Carr involved criminal conduct. Most dealt with conflicts over her personal style and her alleged penchant for taking action on board matters while refusing to honor the will of the majority.
One of the charges against Carr involved her alleged refusal to grant Ivey’s request to attend a conference in New Orleans last September.
According to Petrungaro’s report, Ivey and another board member asked Carr to place an item on the board’s August agenda regarding their approval to attend the conference, but Carr refused.
She then issued a memo asking that all board members refrain from traveling and show more restraint with district resources.
“We as a board (have) recently been in the newspaper for extravagant spending on travel. Allow this negative view of our board members to quietly slip away,” reads the memo, which is attached as an exhibit in Petrungaro’s report.
As a result of Carr’s alleged refusal to consider additional board travel — in her memo she states that board members are already approved to attend two upcoming conferences — Ivey and two other board members convened a special meeting where they approved their attendance at the New Orleans conference.
In December, the board passed a resolution supporting the removal of Carr as board president, citing 12 administrative charges of “misconduct and performance deficiencies,” that had been investigated and sustained by the board’s attorney. She was officially stripped of the board presidency by a 4-3 vote earlier this month, but has stated her intention to challenge the legality of the board’s action in court.
Since the Illinois School Code does not address a board’s removal of one of its own officers, and there is no court precedent on the permissibility of such an action, it’s unclear whether Carr’s ouster will withstand a legal challenge.
Her attorney Steven Glink, who said he believes the board’s actions were illegal, intends to soon file a declaratory action and a separate emergency motion for a temporary restraining order, in the hope that a judge will move swiftly to reverse Carr’s removal.
“There is no question she was elected president and has a two-year term, and there’s no dispute that the school code does not give other board members the express authority to do what they did,” he said. “The only question is whether they have implied or inherent authority to do what they did.”
District Superintendent Elizabeth Reynolds said the district had no comment on Carr’s threatened lawsuit.
“If a lawsuit is filed, the Board of Education will review the allegations, consider all of its options for responding to that lawsuit and will make a decision it deems best for the entire School District community,” she said in an emailed statement. “As is the case with any disagreement someone has with a decision made by the school board, we hope that the School District will not be forced into litigation.”
Twitter @ZakKoeske