Judge urges U-46 suit settlement

•Lawyer reveals crux of settlement terms.>

A federal judge on Wednesday strongly advised the lawyers in the Elgin Area School District U-46 racial bias lawsuit to discuss settlement, warning them they were entering a very costly, lengthy phase of the already costly, lengthy proceedings.

Both sides have repeatedly stated their willingness to resolve the lawsuit.

But on Wednesday, Magistrate Judge Michael Mason forced their hands and possibly put an end to the three-year settlement standoff.

Mason told the lawyer for the families suing the district to produce settlement terms. He then told the lawyer for U-46 to engage in court-supervised settlement talks.

In the past, the district had refused to discuss settlement without first hearing the families' terms.

And the families refused to divulge terms without U-46 first agreeing to court-supervised settlement talks.

After prodding from Mason, both sides indicated their willingness to comply with his directives.

"If we get a written proposal, we'll talk to the board about it and have discussions with the magistrate," said Pattie Whitten of the district's outside law firm, Chicago-based Franczek and Sullivan.

"The court has always been encouraging us to settle," said Carol Ashley of the Futterman and Howard law firm, which represents the families suing the district.

"I think today he just struck at a particularly good moment," Ashley said.

Lending urgency to the moment, Mason granted extra time to complete the costly process of exchanging pre-trial evidence -- but warned he was setting a final, non-negotiable deadline of Nov. 1 to finish the process.

Mason reminded the lawyers the whole stage could be avoided with settlement.

And looming over the settlement discussions is U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman's pending decision on whether to make the lawsuit class action.

A class action ruling would make all the nearly 20,000 black and minority students in the state's second largest district party to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges black and Hispanic students in U-46 attend older, more crowded schools; are bused farther and more often than white students; and receive inferior educational opportunities.

Lawyers for the families suing the district have always sought court-supervised settlement talks.

But since 2004, the district has rejected several third-party offers to facilitate settlement talks.

In December 2004, before the federal lawsuit was filed, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice offered to mediate the dispute.

Justice officials renewed the offer in February 2005, when the lawsuit was filed.

Both times, attorneys for U-46 declined the proposal, saying they were willing to defend the claims in court, if necessary.

Shoring up their defense, district officials hired Hogan and Hartson, the Washington law firm of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, to assist their local law firm.

To date, U-46 has spent more than $3.2æmillion in its defense against the lawsuit.

A settlement could also put them on the hook for the legal fees of opposing counsel, whose tab now likely runs in the millions.

In December 2005, the lawyers for the families asked Gettleman to mandate court-supervised negotiations.

At a hearing on the matter, Gettleman said he would not force the district to engage in settlement talks but advised, "I think it would be very wise to see if it could be somehow resolved."

On Wednesday, school board President Ken Kaczynski expressed cautious optimism about settlement.

"We've always wanted to settle and not have to litigate," Kaczynski said. "We'll see how it plays out, but this is a step in the right direction."

Before the lawsuit was filed, U-46 engaged in five months of negotiations with Futterman and Howard and the members of the parent group the law firm represented at the time.

On the night negotiations broke off in December 2004, U-46 administrators unveiled a series of "educational enhancements" targeted at minority students.

The initiatives included an audit of the district's bilingual program, all-day kindergarten for at-risk students, and class size caps at schools with lagging test scores.

At the time, members of the parent group said those initiatives were among the settlement terms discussed during the 2004 talks.

U-46 has since implemented all of those initiatives as part of its district improvement plan.