Principals' files sought in U-46 suit

Lawyers for the families suing Elgin Area School District U-46 over bias claims have asked a judge to force the district to turn over documents from the files of school principals.

Though the district already has shared an estimated 400,000 pages of evidence, none of the documents came directly from the files of U-46 principals.

Lawyers for U-46 say the district already has produced all of the documents the families have requested.

The principals' files, according to attorneys for U-46, do not contain any relevant information that the district has not already produced from the files of other district employees.

The district has declined to sift through the principals' files unless the families' lawyer can specify what relevant information those files might contain.

Carol Ashley of Futterman and Howard said she cannot say what, specifically, she's looking for, since she has no access to the files.

But she said it seems very unlikely that, over the course of several years, no principal in the state's second-largest school system produced a single unique document relevant to the lawsuit.

Principals are particularly likely, according to Ashley, to have relevant information about the impact of the 2004 decision to end the decades-old practice of busing students to achieve racial balance across the district's 40 elementary schools.

The lawsuit claims the revised boundary map contributed to the segregation of black and Hispanic students, who attend older, more crowded schools; take the bus farther and more often than white students; and receive inferior educational opportunities.

The lawsuit was filed in February 2005, and lawyers for the district and the families have been swapping boxes full of evidence for nearly a year.

The cutoff date for the exchange of evidence is Nov. 1.

The district has until Monday to respond to the families' bid for evidence from the principals' files.

In a separate motion filed Friday, Ashley also asked the judge to force the district to provide scanned electronic copies of the paper evidence the district already has produced.

District lawyers have refused, saying they have no obligation to duplicate their efforts.

Ashley offered to split the cost of producing the electronic copies with the district.

She also emphasized that providing the families with electronic copies of evidence could ultimately save the district money.

If the families win the lawsuit, the district could be forced to pay the legal costs incurred by the plaintiffs.

Documents that are searchable would cut down on the amount of time lawyers must spend reviewing evidence, Ashley said.

Ashley charges $395 an hour for her time.

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