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Schools

Geneva School Board Reveals Name of 'Employee A' in Open Session

School District 304 complies with the Illinois Attorney General's Office following its opinion that the School District had violated the Open Meetings Act.

If a fired School District employee's name is read aloud in open session and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

That's the philosophical question that follows Tuesday night's action by the Geneva Board of Education in response to a challenge by the Kane County Chronicle and a subsequent ruling by the Illinois Attorney General's Office that the board had, in fact, violated the Open Meetings Act.

The Geneva Board of Education complied with a late-September opinion by the office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan and officially read in open session the name of "Employee A," whose dismissal had been recommended on June 24.

After a brief executive session Tuesday night, School Board President Mark Grosso reconvened the meeting without even sitting down. The board stood in a circle while Grosso made a motion that simply confirmed that the board had dismissed "Terrie Harrington due to performance concerns." The motion passed unanimously in a roll call vote by the seven-member board.

By that time, the cameras had been turned off and no one was left in the audience, save one old Patch editor.

According to a July article in the Chronicle, Harrington was one of three dismissed employees since 2010 whose names were not read aloud in open session of previous meetings.

The Chronicle argued that the Open Meetings Act was being violated by the district and filed a request for administrative review with the Attorney General’s Office. 

Weeks prior to the meeting, School District 304 FOIA Officer Kelley Munch told the Chronicle that the district would "take the appropriate steps to remedy” the matter if the Attorney General's Office were to render an opinion that the Open Meetings Act was violated. That was the action taken Tuesday.

Harrington was a kindergarten instructional assistant at Heartland Elementary School who had been an employee for 17 years, with an hourly wage of $13.42 in the 2012-13 school year. Harrington had earned a total of $13,758 that year, according to the Chronicle. 

The School District had released Harrington's name to the Chronicle, as well as the salary information and length of service of all three dismissed employees in question, and the Chronicle had published the information in July.

The other two employees were:

  • Deborah Regelbrugge, a preschool special education assistant, who had been with the district more than six years and earned $12,518 in the 2012-13 school year.
  • Daniel Benjamin, a maintenance worker at Geneva Middle School South, who was with the district for nine years and whose salary was $47,419.

Harrington and Regelbrugge were identified in open session only as “Employee A” and Benjamin was referred to as “a specific employee” in open session, according to the Chronicle.

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