Update on Merit contract status

Since the board isn’t updating us on this process, I’m learning what I can via CORA requests. The latest is that Brad Miller sent a draft of the contract with Merit to another attorney after a brief one week review with Gustafson, Neal, and the outside consultant Tom Weston. This draft contract was sent on February 22, along with a document outlining benchmarks (source). The other attorney is Barry Arrington (arringtonpc.com), the person who signed the MOU on behalf of Merit (so we can assume he’s their legal counsel in this matter). My CORA request was focused on conversations between Gustafson and the Weston, and those conversations really dropped off after the draft contract was sent. So, I’ll need to submit a different CORA request to learn what’s been happening since.

If you’d like to read the results of that CORA request detailing talks between Gustafson and Weston, you can find all the documents here.

CORA request – Illingworth requesting ‘list’ from Neal

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.

Video of 3/9 board meeting

For those of you unable to attend the March 9th regular board meeting, the livestream on YouTube was recorded and can be downloaded here. Part 1 encompasses the portion up to the Public Comment section. Part 2 is the Public Comment section. Part 3 is the remainder of the meeting, up to the point where they went to executive session and the livestream cut out.

There was a fantastic turnout of concerned citizens at this meeting! Which of course should not be considered a ‘good’ thing for a school board meeting…it’s usually a sign of something wrong!

CORA request – Merit MOU

We have obtained a copy of the MOU with Merit, and it can be viewed here.

Regarding people hired to help with this process, the response about a CSI liaison is here. While not technically a CSI liaison, an outside consultant has been hired and a recent invoice can be viewed here ($2k). The invoice itself is not a lot of money, but the items billed for do shed some light on the overall timeline here.