Still waiting for answer on that layoff thing

I'd like to apologize for our failure to report one of the biggest stories of the year: the complete breakdown for more than a week of all electronic communications devices in one of the biggest school districts we cover from our DuPage offices - Naperville Unit District 203.

How else could you explain the district's failure to respond for more than a week to our request for a correction or at least equal time to its March 17 Talk203 e-mail missive sent to thousands of people.

It began with a "message from Superintendent Dr. Mark Mitrovich":

"Contrary to the headline in Tuesday's Daily Herald, there has been no change in District 203's approach to its annual non-renewals. Thanks to sound financial planning and a reasonable contract signed on March 1 by the Board of Education with its Teachers' Association (NUEA) - which will cost the District an average of less than 1% per year over the life of the three-year contract - jobs have been preserved."

Our headline read:

"Dist. 203 does about face on layoffs."

How did we reach that conclusion? Well, a week before the district announced the layoffs of 300 employees, Mitrovich himself said there would be no layoffs. I don't think his comments were open to much misinterpretation, as our District 203 reporter, Melissa Jenco, recorded his March 8 session with the media. City Editor Bob Smith outlined the exact exchange from the audio in a memo he sent to district administrators and board members:

Naperville Sun: You said you wouldn't be losing teachers, so this contract, you wouldn't be forced to...

Mark Mitrovich: I think the only thing we would be forced to do, we're reassessing in terms of any potential positions relative to if through attrition, but even there that's not something we're looking at.

Anytime you cut people you impact kids. It isn't that we run real rich to begin with. There are a lot of things we run pretty lean here. So the NUEA came in saying, 'Look, one of our issues is we want to protect jobs.' We said we do, too. We share that. And that's one thing I heard loud and clear from parents.

Chicago Tribune: Again, just to clarify, no layoffs.

Mitrovich: No.

Daily Herald: Does that include, I know there's always the list that comes out every spring of the nontenured teachers.

Mitrovich: No, we will not be issuing any nonrenewal notices.

As Smith put it: "You will notice Dr. Mitrovich was asked three times by three different reporters about layoffs and in each case his answer was the same: There would be none. One week later, Dr. Mitrovich announced that 300 District 203 employees, including nearly 90 teachers, were receiving layoff notices.

"If that is not an about-face - as our headline suggests - I'm not sure what is."

The only reply we've gotten is from one board member who didn't address the issue. Otherwise, nothing but silence from the district.

It would be easy to say, oh, what's the big deal; the district just called our headline inaccurate. But it would have been just as easy for the district to clarify its memo and acknowledge they got it wrong when they said we got it wrong.

Further, Jenco has covered the district for almost five years; she has a well-earned reputation as someone who gets it right. To incorrectly, even if somewhat unobtrusively, discredit her work is a disservice.

After all, what does a reporter and her newspaper have other than their credibility?

jdavis@dailyherald.com