On January 29, 2022, David Illingworth sent Dr. Neal and email where he requested
that Dr. Neal “use your best judgement in preparing a list of positions in which a change in personnel
would be beneficial to our kids, and would likewise help the union see the wisdom in cooperation rather
than conflict.”

A CORA request on 3/7/2022 for more information on whether such a list was ever created, yielded this response:

Findings: Per Superintendent Dr. Mathew Neal – no list was ever created, nor has a list been received by the Superintendent. No further emails were found.

(source document)

Analysis – this is encouraging, though it is unknown if there have been verbal discussions regarding this topic, if people may have been named outside of an official list.

Speculation – Illingworth has been a vocal critic of the WPEA union, especially in last night’s board meeting. However, he previously advocated chartering Merit as the priority along with a ‘flood zone’ tactic of other issues to reduce the effectiveness of opponents (read source email here). Considering how strong his anti-union rhetoric was in last night’s board meeting (see video, part 1), is this all just an attempted distraction from his admitted top priority of Merit Academy? I think this very likely.