The District 65 school board president and vice president sent a letter to former Superintendent Devon Horton on Monday warning him to get up to date on his repayment plan immediately or risk being charged for the entire amount due.
The RoundTable reported earlier this week that Horton had consistently submitted his required monthly $700 payments more than two weeks late, even going more than two months without making a payment at all. He owes a total of $25,200 back to District 65 to cover costs associated with finding a new superintendent.
“You have failed to make one $700 payment and have been consistently late on nearly all your other payments,” board President Sergio Hernandez and Vice President Soo La Kim wrote in the letter, which the RoundTable obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. “You are currently in default and the District has the right to require the entire remaining amount immediately due and assess significant additional late penalties. This letter serves to disabuse you of any assumption that the District accepts your pattern of late payments.”
Horton covered the missing February payment last Thursday, though the letter from Hernandez and Kim still mentioned it. Based on language in the repayment agreement that Hernandez and Horton signed last summer, paying more than two weeks late triggers a late fee equal to 10% of the entire remaining amount owed. According to the RoundTable’s analysis, that means he had accrued compounding late fees adding up to nearly $18,000 as of the end of February.
“As a last good faith gesture, the District is willing to assess for now a single month penalty” of $2,084, Hernandez and Kim wrote. Based on a strict reading of the repayment agreement, that’s the late fee he would owe if only his February payment had been late.
Horton quickly complied, paying $2,880 on March 6, which covered both the late fee and his $700 payment for the month of March.
If he’s more than two weeks late on a future payment, “the District will likely consider you in default, pursue current and past penalty amounts, and pursue all legal remedies available to it,” according to the letter.
Through January, Sarita Smith, District 65’s student assignments manager, had made the monthly payments on Horton’s behalf using money orders because he was unable to pay electronically until February, according to Smith. He would send the money to Smith over a wire transfer, and she would then use a money order from her own account to make the payments, she said.
“We further understand that you made some payments through a District employee, where the employee would provide the check to the District, and you apparently reimbursed the employee,” the letter said. “This is inappropriate. Going forward, you should make your payments directly to the District and not involve District employees.”
Wow this is Great News!!
So this must mean the city will be waiving any resident or even FORMER residents late penalties for overdue property taxes, overdue payment of parking tickets, late payment of sales taxes and any late payments of business licenses…etc. etc. etc.
Not the most fiscally sound plan, but fair is fair right?
Because they wouldn’t just bend the rules for someone they foolishly hired that blew the District budget out of the sky and now cost many people their livelihoods in education due to a “lack fo funds?” Nah, they’re the good guys, if you don’t believe me just ask them they’ll tell you they are…
Who exactly decided that Mr. Horton need not return money he agreed to refund to the Evanston taxpayers? How is this even legally possible? The whole district stinks of cronyism and corruption.
Waiving +/- $16K in late payment penalties for no good reason does not “disabuse” Dr. Horton of the District’s willingness to tolerate his pattern of late payments – very much the opposite. Actions speak louder than words.
There was no good reason to enter into that payment plan to begin with, and had someone not asked questions and caused some embarrassment to all involved, the pattern of late payments and non-payments would have continued.
Wait? Wah? “A last good faith gesture?” Seriously?
This guy owes thousands of dollars on this agreement and you’re letting it slide?
Parents will remember this when we are paying summer school tuition because you needed to start charging taxpayers more money to meet the budget hole that Horton and the Board dug.
We are so lucky that this guy decided to take a job somewhere else.
This does not reflect well on the former superintendent nor on the District 65 Board. These are the same people who authorized spending a lot of money to build an unneeded school in the face of steadily declining enrollment and are conducting a hidden search for a new superintendent.
It is important that the community at large and its leaders ask why Devon Horton thinks it’s okay to fail on his generous repayment terms. It is also important to ask whether such a person should have been in charge of Evanston’s elementary and middle school children and what selection criteria was missed or biased that enabled his hiring in the first place.
“As a last good faith gesture”
Why? What did he do to deserve a payment plan in the first place, let alone multiple exceptions to the rules the board put in place?