Court Opinion

ID: 9819497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:26:34.204791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:05.683955
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WELCH, dissenting: I agree that the order of the circuit court must be reversed. However, I do not agree that the court lacked jurisdiction to allow an amendment of the complaint. I believe that both the order of the Board and the order of the circuit court are against the manifest weight of the evidence presented in this case, and I would reverse those orders. Although the majority focuses on the issue of jurisdiction, I believe that in this case the question of jurisdiction is simple and straightforward: the plain language of section 3 — 107(a) mandates that “if [the omitted party] was not named by the administrative agency in its final order as a party of record, then the court shall grant the plaintiff 21 days from the date of the determination in which to name and serve the unnamed party as a defendant.” (Emphasis added.) 735 ILCS 5/3 — 107(a) (West 2000). It is undisputed that the petitioners were not named as parties of record in the Board’s final order. Accordingly, the circuit court was required by law to allow the plaintiffs to amend their complaint within 21 days in accordance with section 3 — 107(a). Established precedent should compel this court to reverse the order entered by the Board and affirmed by the circuit court. In Carver v. Bond/Fayette/Effingham Regional Board of School Trustees, 146 Ill. 2d 347, 356, 358 (1992), the Illinois Supreme Court reiterated the long-standing rule that petitions for detachment and annexation should be granted only where the petitioner has shown that the overall benefit to the annexing district and the detachment area, considered together, clearly outweighs the resulting detriment to the losing district and the surrounding community as a whole. In applying this benefit-detriment test, the following factors must be considered: (1) the differences between facilities and curricula, (2) the distance from the petitioners’ homes to the respective schools, (3) the effect detachment would have on the ability of either district to meet state standards of recognition, (4) the impact of the proposed boundary change on the tax revenues of both districts, and (5) the “whole child” and “community of interest” factors, i.e., the identification of the petitioning territory with the district to which annexation is sought and the corresponding likelihood of participation in school and extracurricular activities. Carver, 146 Ill. 2d at 356. The court stressed, as it had in previous cases, that although the. personal desires of the petitioning parents may be taken into account, more than a personal preference is needed to support a change in school district boundaries. Carver, 146 Ill. 2d at 356. Applying these factors to the case at bar, it is abundantly clear that the decision to allow the detachment was against the manifest weight of the evidence. As to the first factor — differences between school facilities and curricula — the evidence presented shows that East St. Louis No. 189 is in a far better position to appropriately house, instruct, and accommodate students in the detachment area than is Collinsville Unit 10. At present, East St. Louis No. 189 has adequate space and resources for all the detachment-area students, and in the very near future, with an $80 million grant from the State of Illinois, the district plans to build new schools, including a brand-new, air-conditioned grade school in the heart of the Fairmont City/ Washington Park area that will be able to operate year-round to serve the needs of the detachment-area students. Collinsville Unit 10, on the other hand, already faces a serious overcrowding problem, with the school that most of the detachment-area students would attend, Kreitner Elementary School, already strained to the point that seven classrooms now occupy the space designed for four and the school library is placed in the hallway of the school. Two mobile classrooms, much like mobile homes, are presently in use, and as many as four additional mobile classrooms would be needed if the detachment occurred. As to differences in curricula, the petitioners, who bore the burden of clearly demonstrating that the benefits of detachment outweighed the detriments, failed to provide any evidence that there are courses of study available at Collinsville Unit 10 that are not available at East St. Louis No. 189. To the contrary, the “evidence” provided by the petitioners consisted of anecdotal hearsay to the effect that they believed their children would receive a better education in Collinsville Unit 10. Disregarding this anecdotal hearsay and focusing on the facts, it is undisputed that East St. Louis No. 189 has hired a teacher certified in bilingual education and a teacher’s aide certified in bilingual language to assist the detachment-area students, many of whom have great difficulty communicating, either orally or in writing, in English. East St. Louis No. 189 also employs an English-as-a-second-language teacher. The East St. Louis No. 189 administration has been very supportive of the bilingual education efforts in the district. Collinsville Unit 10 has no. such teachers, and the recruitment of trained, competent teachers would be costly in terms of money, time, and effort expended. Accordingly, the first Carver factor weighs heavily against a detachment. As to the second factor — distance from the petitioners’ homes to the respective schools — it is undisputed that CoUinsviHe Unit 10’s Kreitner Elementary School is 4.4 mües from downtown Fairmont City, whereas East St. Louis No. 189’s Manners School is only 2.6 miles from Fairmont City, or roughly half as far. As noted above, East St. Louis No. 189 plans to build a new grade school in the heart of the Fairmont City/Washington Park area. “Build it and they wiU not come.” This factor, too, weighs against a detachment. As to the third factor — the effect a detachment would have on the ability of either district to meet state standards of recognition — the petitioners provided absolutely no evidence regarding the possible benefits of a detachment or regarding the detriments. Accordingly, the Board, the circuit court, and this court are not in a position to assess the relevancy of this factor to the case at bar, although I stress again that it is the petitioners, not the school districts, who must clearly make the case for a detachment. As to the fourth factor — the impact of the proposed boundary change on the tax revenues of both districts — the evidence shows that East St. Louis No. 189 would lose approximately $245,000, an admittedly small amount to East St. Louis No. 189. The cost to Collinsville Unit 10, however, would be substantial. In undisputed testimony, the director of business affairs for Collinsville Unit 10, Jeff Endres, stated that even after accounting for the increase in income to the district from property taxes paid by the Fairmont City residents and additional aid from the State of Illinois, the district would experience an annual deficit of $330,000 if forced to take on the detachment-area students. Additionally, a one-time deficit of $1.1 million would be incurred if the annexation took place before the district was permitted to levy and coHect taxes from the annexed area. These financial burdens would come at a time when the district is already facing a deficit of $2.5 million. Testimony showed that East St. Louis No. 189, on the other hand, is stable financially and recently received an upgrade in its credit rating. There was nothing inherently improbable in the evidence offered by the school districts, and that evidence was uncontroverted and unimpeached. Nevertheless, at least one board member took issue with the evidence, and even the majority concedes that “disbelief of Collinsville Unit 10’s financial numbers” was a factor in the Board’s decision. 348 Ill. App. 3d at 691. Although this court would normally defer to an administrative body’s findings of fact, those factual findings must still be based on the evidence. Crabtree v. Illinois Department of Agriculture, 128 Ill. 2d 510, 518 (1989). Because the Board’s findings of fact were not based upon the evidence presented, the findings should be accorded no deference. Accordingly, disregarding the findings of the Board and looking at the actual evidence, described above, I believe that it is clear that this factor, too, weighs against a detachment. As to the fifth and final Carver factor — the identification of the petitioning territory with the district to which annexation is sought and the corresponding likelihood of participation in school and extracurricular activities — the petitioners again failed to provide evidence supporting the detachment. The petitioners offered no testimony demonstrating that the detachment-area students, in general, identify more closely with the community within Collinsville Unit 10 than with the community within East St. Louis No. 189. To the contrary, the evidence clearly and unequivocally shows that East St. Louis No. 189 has already taken many steps to accommodate language and other cultural issues of the detachment-area students, whereas Collinsville Unit 10 has not yet done so. The testimony of one parent that his children would have better opportunities for extracurricular activities such as sports in Collinsville Unit 10 was effectively refuted when the parent was forced to concede that he did not know whether the sporting activities he had “heard about” were offered by Collinsville Unit 10 or by the Collinsville Area Recreation District. Finally, although no other evidence on this factor was offered by the petitioners, it should be noted that the area of Collinsville Unit 10 that borders the detachment area is mainly rural, whereas the detachment area is predominately urban. Accordingly, the detachment area is more like the area it is attempting to detach from than the area in Collinsville Unit 10 to which it is adjacent. The fifth Carver factor weighs strongly against a detachment. Indeed, all the evidence presented in this case weighs overwhelmingly against a detachment. Not one Carver factor favors a detachment. The decision of the Board is clearly and unequivocally contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and should be reversed.