JASPER CO., IL. (ECWd) - Jasper County School Board Member Jed Earnest's lawsuit against the School District and certain board members was terminated in March of 2019 by the Federal Court in Granting the District's Motion to dismiss. The Federal Court found, based on the evidence presented,...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - The Jasper County Community School District No. 1 has received a Motion for Sanctions against it alleging one of its employees committed witness tampering by threatening and intimidating a witness in a federal lawsuit. A Federal lawsuit was brought against the Jasper County...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - Jasper County Community Unit School District #1 has violated the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), as I had previously stated, by refusing to provide the requested public records as required by law. On December 26, 2017, and January 12, 2018, I requested several...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - Calling their arguments as without merit, Federal District Judge J. Phil Gilbert DENIED Jasper County School District #1's motion to dismiss the civil rights case brought against them by School Board member Jed Earnest. The case will continue moving forward in the federal...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - Jasper County Community Unit School District #1 board member Jerry Earnest filed an amended complaint in Federal Court on May 25, 2018. Count 1 consists of a "Claim for Deprivation of a Liberty Interest" in that the district prohibited his access to the...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - Once again, Jasper County School District is making up its own rules which we believe violate the letter and intent of the law. We wrote about it in a previous article (here) and now the Attorney General's Public Access Counselor is reviewing this...
NEWTON, IL., (ECWd) - Violations of the Open Meetings Act are criminal, are Class C Misdemeanors (5 ILCS 120/4), and need to be punished as the crimes they are. In the context of this article, we firmly believe that these are willful violations of the OMA,...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - What is a sure sign a public board wants to hide everything from the public? They started acting like little dictators and direct police to remove law-abiding citizens from "their" meeting room - what a great way to tell people you hate...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - The Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Counselor issued a determination letter stating that it was "unable to conclude" and their office had "insufficient evidence" to determine that Jasper County School Board held an improper closed session meeting-after-the-meeting on December 18, 2017. This stems...
NEWTON, IL. (ECWd) - During at least the last two Jasper County School Board meetings, their attorney, Anthony Loizzi, from Hodges Loizzi Eisenhammer Rodick & Kohn LLP, displayed a disrespectful, interruptive, and disruptive attitude towards School Board member Earnest and in some cases, towards citizens attending...
