Judge extends deadline by a month in U-46 bias case

Ongoing disputes over evidence in the racial bias lawsuit against Elgin Area School District U-46 prompted a federal judge to extend again the already protracted discovery process.

Judge Michael Mason last week pushed back the deadline for discovery, the costly pretrial exchange of evidence, so that U-46 and the families accusing the district of bias could resolve disputes over what documents U-46 must turn over.

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

The new discovery deadline is Nov. 29, more than a year after the judge ordered the parties to restart discovery, which had been halted while the judge considered the third, most recent version of the lawsuit.

The original discovery cutoff date was June 1. In September, the judge pushed back the deadline to Nov. 1. The judge said the latest extension is not for the exchange of evidence, but for the parties to file motions with the court in case they cannot resolve their discovery differences.

Outstanding discovery issues center on whether the district has an obligation to produce more electronic evidence or whether the documents the families seek would just duplicate what the district already has shared.

U-46 recently agreed to search the files of two district consultants and acting Superintendent Mary Jane Broncato to confirm whether they have any relevant documents.

The district also told the lawyers for the families that they would produce e-mails from U-46 Chief Financial Officer John Prince and retiring Superintendent Connie Neale.

The district does not plan to produce any more documents from the files of Beatriz Arias, who audited the district's bilingual program, or from Jerome McKibben, the demographer who helped the district redraw its attendance map.

Nor does the district plan to pull more data from the files of principals or from directors or assistant directors. Earlier this month the judge rejected an appeal by the families to compel the district to produce data from the files of district principals.

The judge has alerted the parties that he will not consider any additional extensions, under any circumstances.

First filed in February 2005, the lawsuit claims U-46 violated the constitutional rights of black and Hispanic students by placing them in crowded, older schools; busing them farther and more often than white students; and providing them inferior educational opportunities.