Making Up For The School Superintendent's Abuse Of Secrecy
The following is a statement from Elmwood Park Advocate Editor Kevin Gosztola that was read as part of public comment during the Elmwood Park Community Unit School District 401’s Regular Board Meeting on Wednesday, February 18.
I’m here tonight because on January 27 I learned that District 401 destroyed its archive of board meeting videos. The District’s attorney Ryan Gillespie confirmed the destruction in correspondence with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office of the Public Access Counselor.
The newsletter had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a video of a September 2024 board meeting. While our FOIA request was apparently submitted after the destruction, the disposal prevented the newsletter from obtaining accurate information and undermined the District’s public relations program which is supposed to build trust.
Worse, Superintendent Dr. Leah Gauthier, Board President Frank Parisi, Board Vice President Peter Volpe, and the school board seemingly engaged in an effort to deceive the public by not being upfront about the destruction.
On November 19, the Superintendent said: “We’re going to continue to livestream and record the regular board meetings. The recorded meetings will be available for viewing until the next regular board meeting.” Not a word was said about destroying videos.
Gillespie asserted that the District retains minutes from past meetings so it does not have to maintain duplicate records. His argument is that minutes are duplicates of videos. But that’s like saying cliff notes are duplicates of books. Or that the synopsis of a film is a duplicate of the film itself.
May I suggest finding a better attorney? Because a call to the Illinois State Archives quickly proved that this is utter nonsense.
Upon information and belief, the Superintendent did not follow the law or regulations when the board meeting videos were destroyed. The Superintendent violated the Illinois Local Records Act. The records retention schedule that the newsletter obtained through a FOIA request did not include video recordings. According to the Illinois State Archives, the District had to request approval for the destruction. Unless the Superintendent is hiding records from the newsletter and public, this approval was not sought.
No one has been arrested and charged with a crime. Improper records destruction is simply not considered that kind of an offense. So there’s no need for the District to worry about the State’s Attorney investigating and holding anyone accountable.
Unlike the Village of Elmwood Park and the Elmwood Park Public Library, the Superintendent has tried to frustrate the newsletter’s ability to obtain public records multiple times. The Superintendent could learn something from the professionalism of Village Clerk Gina Pesko. (Plus, as far as I know, the Village is not destroying public records because they’re afraid of too much transparency. They have Village Board meeting videos that go all the way back to June 2012.)
While the Superintendent pretends the District did nothing wrong, the Elmwood Park Advocate will repost videos of Board meetings and guarantee that parents, guardians, and students have access to videos if they ever wish to reference a past meeting. We will do our part to make up for this secrecy.
Did you hit publish as you were standing up, I think I watched it happen! Thanks for taking a stand!
Please know that Google Drive has a vault where everything gets copied to even if deleted off of the server. I would not put it past Leah to have Tom Kinane delete it from there.