Four years later with no end in sight

This Fourth of July holiday marks another sort of fourth for Elgin Area School District U-46 - the fourth anniversary of the beginning of a costly battle for equal educational opportunities.

In early July of 2004, the city of Elgin and a group of 10 U-46 parents accused the district of racial bias, claiming a newly approved boundary map created a separate but unequal educational system for minority students and their white peers.

In February 2005, three Latino families took those claims one step further, filing a federal lawsuit which formally accused the district of racial discrimination.

The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago was the first desegregation claim targeting an Illinois school system since Champaign schools faced similar allegations in 2000, just as Rockford schools did in 1989 and Chicago schools in 1980.

The lawsuit alleges some Elgin schools are so crowded that many Latino students just learning English are forced away from their neighborhood schools to buildings with space for bilingual classrooms.

The lawsuit also claims the district provides less stability for Latinos than it does for whites, that the district illegally segregates bilingual students from mainstream students, and that the district fails to provide adequate special-education services to bilingual students. This adds up to Latino students receiving fewer educational opportunities than white students - a violation of state and federal laws.

Representing the Elgin families are Futterman and Howard, a high-powered Chicago law firm that fought desegregation battles in Chicago, Rockford, Champaign and Freeport.

Representing the district are two renowned firms: Hogan and Hartson, the Washington, D.C. former firm of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, and Chicago-based Franczek Sullivan.

Four years after those initial July accusations, the lawsuit has cost U-46 taxpayers more than $4.6 million.

It is still in its early stages.

Both sides, still in the midst of exchanging pretrial evidence, are currently in the process of oral discovery - taking the depositions, or testimony, of each other's key witnesses.

Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason has ordered both sides to be finished with oral discovery by October.

There is much more to come.

Once the witness depositions are done, there will be depositions of each side's "experts" - people identified by each side to have credentials and expertise in areas related to the lawsuit.

These depositions generally include travel, hotel and per diem costs, lawyers' fees and experts' fees.

"After setting deposition deadlines, the judge will have to set a date for summary judgment," Mark Weber, a civil law professor at DePaul University said in March.

During summary judgment, a judge can make a ruling based on evidence without going to trial.

Summary judgment can take four or more months, Weber said. If summary judgment is not granted, the case will proceed to trial.

Along the way, the topic of settlement will arise from time to time. All along, both sides have said - more or less - that they would be open to settlement talks. But those talks haven't happened since 2004, before the lawsuit was filed.

"Our approach is to always try and settle these cases," said Futterman Howard lawyer Carol Ashley said this spring. "You want to get remedies to the kids as soon as possible."

In four years time, much has changed in U-46. The district has climbed out of more than $40 million in debt.

It is no longer in the hands of superintendent Connie Neale. And it has initiated a host of self-improvement strategies.

Other things, however, remain hanging.

U-46 students and their parents are still waiting for an answer. And taxpayers are still footing the bill.

Four years from now, will an end be in sight? And at what cost?