ROE’s Professional Development Alliance Officially Dissolves –

Will-Grundy-Kendall Counties (ECWd) –

The 27-year Intergovernmental Agreement (“IGA”) between the Will County and Grundy-Kendall County Regional Offices of Education, which set up the Professional Development Alliance (“PDA”), will dissolve on December 31, 2023.

According to the initial IGA and the dissolution agreement signed on December 14, 2023, all assets will be proportionally distributed with 70% going to the Will County ROE, and all outstanding debts will be paid proportionally with Will County paying 70%.

The 2024 proposed budget for the PDA, prior to this dissolution notice, was more than $2.345 million.

All physical equipment and technology owned or in possession of the PDA will belong to the Will County ROE, with the exception of computers used by Hallie Brenczewski and Mary Chignoli, which will belong to the Grundy-Kendall County ROE.

There will be a final audit and forensic accounting paid for by the PDA.

Now it is more important than ever for all records of the Professional Development Alliance and of both Regional Offices of Education, including all of those public records currently held by Vista Learning and Evaluwise, to be retained. We suggest each State’s Attorney and each Regional Superintendent send such notice to all of the parties involved. At a minimum, all parties must be noticed that public records, even those held by private contracted parties or entities, cannot be destroyed without prior written application to and approval of the Local or Downstate Records Commision.

This dissolution decision came shortly after we asked for emails of the public employees working under contract for Vista. The request was denied even though a previous written agreement to provide the emails existed between the PDA/Vista and ECWd, pending the sufficiency of answers to the questions we asked of them, which they agreed to answer.

Between 2015 and 2021, according to IRS filings and while the PDA government employees were working under contract for Vista, Vista Learning had total revenue exceeding $7.23 million. There are no online records available for Vista’s revenue for 2022 and 2023 as of this publication.

It is unclear if there are any substantial plans in the works with either ROE regarding the programs and services the PDA has provided for the past 27 years.

We wrote our first article on the PDA in October 2023, read all of them (HERE).