Cheryl McCarthy's Departure Is Great News For 204: Ferak

JOLIET, IL - You may have noticed the farewell celebrations and the awards and accolades are rolling in for retiring Joliet Township High School District 204 Superintendent Cheryl McCarthy.

"Joliet Township High School Superintendent Dr. Cheryl McCarthy received the Community Services Council Outstanding Individual in Human Services Award on April 18 at the Jacob Henry Mansion Estate," one of last week's District 204 press releases noted.

And last Friday, McCarthy's public relations staff cranked out yet another glowing press release about their boss, "Joliet Township's McCarthy named 'Superintendent of Distinction.'"

"Dr. Cheryl McCarthy, superintendent of Joliet Township High School District 204, has been named the 2019 Superintendent of Distinction by her colleagues in the Three Rivers Region of the Illinois Association of School Administrators," the press release reads.

Not surprisingly, there is a concerted public relations effort underway this month (and probably next month) to make sure McCarthy leaves the school district with lots of cheers, not lots of jeers.

Since April, the District 204 PR staff has been urging the Joliet community to RSVP and pay $20 to attend a June 20 retirement banquet at the Jacob Henry Mansion to honor McCarthy.

I find it entirely fitting that the event to honor McCarthy is taking place on June 20 - long after the Joliet Central and Joliet West school year is over, during the official summer break.

Based on my two years back in Joliet, overseeing Joliet Patch, I was not impressed with McCarthy. I'm glad to see her days are numbered leading District 204.

And in selecting McCarthy's replacement, I believe the District 204 School Board made the correct decision, bypassing any internal candidates and hiring its next superintendent from outside Joliet.

The new school superintendent, Mike Hanson, will come to us from the Black Hills of South Dakota. Hanson already has substantial experience as a superintendent and he's worked in a number of different places, unlike McCarthy, who began as a math teacher at Joliet West during the 1980s. She got promoted up the ranks and became superintendent in 2010.

McCarthy herself was not a good public relations ambassador for District 204.

Time and time again, McCarthy chose to be secretive about information that could be negative about the District 204. I've been told by people in the know that she succeeded on several different occasions over the years. But not always.

In trying so hard to keep negative information off-limits to parents and the community, McCarthy often made District 204 look far worse than if she erred on the side of being open and upfront with everyone in the first place.

I thought my predecessor, Joe Hosey, did some solid reporting a couple years ago concerning McCarthy's handling of the drunken-driving case involving Nestor Nowak, 46, one of the driver's education instructors.

Hosey reported that a Joliet Central employee found Nowak slumped over the steering wheel of a white Ford driver's ed car the morning of April 6, 2016. A blood draw at St. Joe's hospital showed his alcohol content was more than three times the .08 percent legal limit for driving.

However, it was not until a week later that a Joliet Central human resources staffer reached out to a Joliet police detective assigned to the school.

On another matter, in March 2018, I published an article headlined, "District 204 Criticized Over Joliet West Gun Secrecy."

My lead paragraph read: "District 204's decision to keep under wraps a recent gun incident involving a Joliet West High School student caused a firestorm of reaction on Thursday and many Patch readers blasted Joliet Township High School District 204 Superintendent Cheryl McCarthy for the secrecy. On Wednesday night, WJOL radio first reported that a Joliet West student had posted a Snapchat of himself with a gun. Although the school district administration investigated the matter and worked with the Joliet Police Department, McCarthy had hoped to keep the issue under wraps so that parents, alumni and the community at large did not know about the incident."

Over the past year, I've also noticed that McCarthy has made a concerted effort to keep her constituents totally in the dark about District 204 salaries, particularly for herself and other high-level administrators.

The most current public salary data that is posted on the District 204 website is from the 2017-2018 school year.

I know this because I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to District 204 specifically asking for the current 2018-2019 salaries for McCarthy and a handful of her key top-level administrators, plus the high school principals and the assistant principals.

The data provided to me in the FOIA indicates that most of these people are making several thousand dollars more this current school year than the information that is currently posted on the District 204 website to comply with state of Illinois transparency laws.

The District 204 public salary data is cleverly buried on the District 204 website, under Human Resources & Employment, under a section called REPORTS.

And for McCarthy, the data lists her salary as $277,098 - even though that is not at all accurate.

Last May, in 2018, I published an article for the Joliet Patch headlined, "$16,626 Raise For Cheryl McCarthy, Retiring 204 Superintendent."

As as result of my reporting, I discovered McCarthy would make a salary of $293,724 for 2018-2019, her final year on the job with 204.

Actually, McCarthy's final salary is 26 percent more than what she made in 2014, when she was making $232,657.

Keep in mind, McCarthy doesn't manage any grade school buildings and junior highs. Grade schools and junior high schools are part District 86 or the Troy 30-C School District, for instance.

Having worked as a public watchdog journalist in several Midwestern states, I have seen my share of public educators climb the superintendent's ladder. Not all of them were noble. Some of them did it for power, ego and because they were money-hungry.

Somewhere along the way, between 2010 and 2019, Cheryl McCarthy started spending way too much time going to Joliet Rotary Club luncheons and functions. She was not a great superintendent for Joliet Township High School 204.

She became preoccupied with how much money she made.

In closing, I'm looking forward to meeting Mike Hanson, who begins his new job running District 204 in July.

I truly believe that better days are ahead of District 204, and I can't wait for July to get here.

A Joliet native and former investigative reporter and editor with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, John Ferak is Patch Editor for Joliet and also writes for Shorewood and Channahon-Minooka.