Nearly four months after the abrupt resignation of Supt. Ushma Shah, Cheree Moore, the school board president at Oak Park Elementary School District 97, says she still has no idea why Shah resigned the week before the new school year started in August.
“To this day we have no clue what happened,” Moore said in a telephone interview with Wednesday Journal.
Moore said she and her fellow school board members were surprised and shocked by Shah’s sudden resignation. Moore said the first inkling she got that something was wrong came when Shah told her at the end of the open session portion of the Aug. 12 school board meeting that she would not be attending the closed session that was about to take place.
“I said, ‘Hey, where are you going’. She said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I was so confused,” Moore said.
While the school board was in closed session that night board members received an email from Shah telling them that she was resigning effective at the end of that week.
“Everyone was just taken aback and we were all surprised,” Moore said. “Everyone was just as confused as I was. We were all super confused about what was going on.”
A bit more of Shah’s perspective is seen in an email she wrote to the board on Aug. 13. That email was obtained by the Journal after a reporter filed an appeal with the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor asking that an unredacted version of that email be made public. At the request of the Attorney General’s office, District 97 released the unredacted email Shah sent to board members. Shah’s email was in response to an email from Moore, and in it Shah expressed what she called her “perspective on how we got here.”
In the previously redacted part of the email Shah listed three bullet points. She referred to a meeting she had with Moore the week before, a meeting that Moore said was mostly about setting the agenda for Aug. 12 meeting. Moore said that Shah brought up her annual evaluation which Moore said had not really begun yet. A few months before Shah had received a three-year contract extension.
“When we met on Aug. 7, I again expressed confidence that we could get to the board’s desired outcomes through the annual performance evaluation process,” Shah wrote. “This was that same forward-moving and optimistic perspective I shared during closed session on July 22 and in my follow up email on July 24.
“I was prepared to present a draft plan of how to move forward through the annual goal-setting process and had hoped to have a discussion about this during yesterday’s closed session with the full board. Unfortunately, we did not get that far.
“It became clear on Aug. 7 that the board was not interested in any changes to your current plan and instead made repeated reference to the process by the board could ‘find cause for termination.’”
Shah concluded, in a final sentence that was not redacted when District 97 first released the email, by saying that therefore she and the school board did not have the level of mutual trust necessary for her to continue as superintendent.
Moore said, “As the incoming, I guess newer, (board) president at that time I just wanted to make sure that there were clear expectations for both the board and for Dr. Shah and so we were really just trying to figure out how often, what’s the cadence, what are we going to be evaluating her on,” Moore said. “I think that she was really focused on, you know, this evaluation and I wanted to focus on what was in front of us.”
During and after the Aug. 7 meeting Moore said she had no indication that anything was seriously wrong.
“I would definitely say it was a friendly, you know, normal conversation,” Moore said. “No animosity or any of that kind of stuff, nothing negative.”
Shah could not be reached for comment despite attempts by phone, text and email. According to her LinkedIn page Shah is now working for the Central Office Transformation Team which is part of the District Leadership Design Lab based at the University of Washington. According to its website the leadership design lab works with school districts to ensure that “school district central offices work together to support excellent, equitable teaching and learning in every classroom every day.”
Shah led District 97 for a bit more than three years. This school year retired superintendents Griff Powell and Patricia Wernet are leading District 97 as interim superintendents. The district is in the midst of a superintendent search and hopes to announce a new hire early next year.
While Moore said her focus and the district’s focus is on finding a new superintendent she would like to know more about why Shah resigned.
“We are committed to moving forward,” Moore said. “Those are her reasons and we respect it but I wish there had been an opportunity to like have a conversation. Maybe there would have been a different outcome but the truth of the matter is the time has passed and she decided to do things her way and there’s nothing we can really do about it. One day, hopefully, she will tell her side of the story but thus far, to my understanding, no one has talked to her and has any more knowledge than we do.”
