Since many of you will be departing for your holiday
break, this will be my last message to you this year. In the spirit of the
season, I wish all of you a restful break and a prosperous New
Year.
On Thursday at its monthly meeting the Illinois State
Board of Education adopted its 2003 Condition of Education report. The report is
a snapshot of the current face of education in
In the report, the board also addressed the need for
additional revenues to adequately fund education. To that point and several
others in the Condition of Education report we will be sending out opinion
pieces statewide soliciting public support for sufficient education funding. As
I did last week, I ask all of you to keep an eye on the Op/Ed pages of your
local newspapers. Please start thinking of examples in your districts that
corroborate how limited available state funding adversely affect your ability to
keep up with the increasing daily costs of providing staff, transportation and
quality programs to your students. I would appreciate you sending a letter to
the editor to illustrate the need for funding reform in
education.
I also want to keep all of you abreast on the release of
the school report cards. Today the list of 450 schools that have been identified
as having discrepancies in their Adequate Yearly Progress status will be
available on our website. We have contacted these schools to make them aware of
the process available to them. Many of you were concerned about incorrectly
being tagged “not making AYP” and to that end we are also purging the AYP status
from the report card information for those identified schools. We will be
posting the individual report cards, reflecting that change, in the weeks to
come.
Our board suggested that we offer regional meetings to
receive insight on the coding errors that resulted in the current situation, in
hopes that we can prevent these difficulties next year. Many of you have already
advised us of your suggestions but I want to know that if you think regional
meetings would be fruitful, please let me know and I can advise staff to
organize an appropriate schedule before next year’s assessments
begin.
I appreciate your continued support and look forward to working with you over the year to come.
Robert E. Schiller
State Superintendent
of Education
Also in today’s message:
· Regional Certification Office Closing
·
Changes in Current Open Meetings
Act Law Effective
·
Newsclips
Regional
Certification Office Closing
The Chicago Regional Certification Office will close at the end of this month. This is the result of the budget cuts made earlier in the year, and it will mean that all services provided by that office will now be provided by the Certification and Professional Development Department in Springfield. More details will be forthcoming as soon as transition plans are completed.
Changes
in Current Open Meetings Act Law Effective
The Open Meetings Act has been recently amended and
changes in the law are effective
Current law requires public bodies to keep written
minutes of all meetings, whether open or closed. The minutes of open meetings must be
made available to the public within 7 days of approval of the minutes by the
public body. Minutes of closed
meetings can be made available after the public body determines that
confidential treatment is no longer necessary.
The new law changes the requirements for maintaining the
minutes of closed meetings.
Beginning
Unless the public body releases the recording, the
verbatim record of a closed meeting is not available to the public or subject to
discovery in any administrative proceeding except in a civil action brought to
enforce the Open Meetings Act. In
the case of such an enforcement action, the court may, in chambers, examine the
verbatim record, if appropriate. In
the case of a criminal proceeding, the court may, in chambers, examine the
recording to decide what portions, if any, must be made available to the parties
for use as evidence in the prosecution.
Generally, therefore, recordings are not available to the public body
unless the court orders disclosure for discovery purposes or the public body
consents to disclosure.
If a case for noncompliance under the Open Meetings Act
goes forward, the court or hearing officer, for purposes of discovery, may
delete any information from the minutes of the closed meeting that is protected
by the attorney-client privilege.
All the other privacy and confidentiality provisions of State and Federal
law apply to the recording and the minutes.
Newsclips