North Cook News

Cook County Republican Party Chairman and Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison says the Illinois State Board of Education’s selection of Tony Sanders as the next state superintendent is the wrong move. 

“Mr. Sanders being appointed to this position by JB Pritzker, is clearly NOT based on merit, but rather glaringly political,” Morrison told West Cook News. “The proof lays in the metric results of his current 9-year tenure with Elgin U-46! The results of those impacted students testing proves this. Sadly resulting in another generation of students left under-educated because of bureaucratic blasé. The Governor repeats his pattern of appointing for political leverage rather than proven merit.”

He believes and is displeased that "Carmen Ayala's results speak for themselves," reiterating that 'metric results have proven to speak for themselves.' 

“Parents should be outraged, they should demand elected office holders, both local and statewide be held accountable for these and other dismal results," Morrison added. "Sadly however when given the chance in November to effectuate change and reverse the course of failure, they chose the same course of re-electing many of the very same elected officials that perpetuate these failing policies, and these results are directly related outcomes to that choice.”

Sanders was promoted to the state superintendent post after a nine-year tenure at U-46 that Wirepoints alleges ended with poor outcomes for many students. “At U-46, just 1 in every 10 minority students can read at grade level. For all students, it’s just 2 in 10. Sanders has been in the district since 2007 and was named superintendent there in 2014,” Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner wrote.

Wirepoints followed up on Facebook. “Anybody following Wirepoints’ recent reporting on Illinois’ educational crisis already knows the numbers: statewide just 1 of every 10 Black students can read at grade level, and for Hispanics, it’s just 2 in every 10. For white students, it’s a better but still dismal 4 in 10. It’s not an exaggeration to say the state’s public schools are condemning an entire generation of #Illinois children to failure,” Wirepoints posted. “So when Governor JB Pritzker recently had the chance to name a new Superintendent to lead the state, he could have picked somebody to shake up the system, somebody whose district was actually leading the state in reading and math outcomes. Maybe somebody from outside the system or outside the state. Somebody who would, finally, prioritize merit, achievement and competence. Somebody who would obsess about dramatically raising student scores.” 

Wirepoints said, "Instead, Pritzker chose Tony Sanders, Superintendent of U-46 in #ElginIL, the state’s second-largest school district with 35,000 students. Sanders' record at U-46 is dismal. There, just 1 in every 10 minority students can read at grade level. For all students, it’s just 2 in 10. Sanders has been in the district since 2007 and was named superintendent there in 2014, so he owns those numbers.”

Sanders became the superintendent of Elgin-based School District U-46 in 2014. Elgin U46 is the state’s second-largest school district with over 39,000 students in 40 elementary schools, eight middle schools, and five high schools. 

He received criticism after several incidents of bullying were publicized. “They are letting the anti-mask children –– they’re calling them –– be assaulted, literally assaulted, and they are congratulating those students,” Elgin parent Joshua Martin claimed, according to the Kane County Reporter. “She got her hand shook by the teachers and my child.” U-46 also continued a mask mandate policy after mandatory masking was ruled unconstitutional. That rule would have enacted mandatory masking based on COVID rates in the school district.