‘I have never been this concerned:’ D112 BOE votes against Glenbrook’s withdrawal from regional special education cooperative

The North Shore District 112 Board of Education voted unanimously on Tuesday evening to deny nearby Glenbrook High School District 225’s petition to withdraw from a regional cooperative that provides special education and professional development services to area schools. 

D112 Superintendent Dr. Michael Lubelfeld recommended the board stand in the way of D225’s withdrawal from TrueNorth Educational Cooperative 804 after sharing concerns District 112 could be legally required to absorb the cooperative’s staff and properties if its 17 other member school districts all successfully withdraw from the cooperative. 

“District 112 has no intention of withdrawing from the cooperative,” Lubelfeld said.

“If this administration came to you asking for you to withdraw from the cooperative, it would purely be a precautionary measure that is only designed to protect us against liabilities, staff upheaval and adoption and acquisition of properties we do not need,” he told the board. 

D225’s Board of Education voted on April 14 to withdraw from the TrueNorth cooperative, which first formed in 1960 as one of the first special education joint agreements in Illinois. 

A March 17 memorandum from D225 Superintendent Dr. Charles Johns to the district’s board of education states his district has “demonstrated the capacity to independently provide comprehensive special education services while continuing to incur substantial membership costs for services they no longer utilize from TrueNorth.”

The letter projected D225’s membership in the TrueNorth collective will cost $623,412 next school year, despite the district employing its own personnel and recently acquiring a more than 8,000 square-foot facility in downtown Northbrook for local specialized services.

D225’s move to leave the TrueNorth cooperative required all other member districts to vote on Glenbrook’s withdrawal by June 1, but only one member needed to vote against D225’s resolution to qualify it as a “non-consensual withdrawal” by TrueNorth’s articles of agreement. 

Now, D225 must appeal with a separate governing body overseeing its township if it intends to override D112’s denial and carry through with its withdrawal from the TrueNorth cooperative.

Only two other school districts have left the TrueNorth cooperative and D225’s petition to withdraw is the first in over 20 years, Lubelfeld said. A review of D225’s petition shows it has not complied with the standard procedures required for a legitimate withdrawal, Lubelfeld added. 

But the precedent D225 could set for other school districts was another reason why Lubelfeld urged the D112 board to vote against Glenbrook’s petition, as the superintendent said he’s aware of “frighteningly significant number of school boards” also considering leaving the cooperative.

New Trier High School also is preparing to withdraw from the cooperative. Its School Board discussed its intention to withdraw on Monday before approving Glenbrook 225’s petition for withdrawal.

An “unlitigated” paragraph of TrueNorth’s bylaws state that the cooperative could immediately dissolve if two-thirds or more of its 18-district cooperative vote to withdraw from the organization, Lubelfeld said.

The superintendent said he is seeking legal advice to confirm whether D112 would become legally responsible for TrueNorth’s 400-plus employees in the event the collective dissolves. 

A unilateral withdrawal from TrueNorth would also disrupt the delivery of its services and “affect the cooperative’s operational efficiency,” a D112 consideration on Tuesday’s vote noted.

Out of District 112’s approximately 3,800 students, 16% have individualized education plans, commonly referred to as IEP’s. The majority of those 600 students receive specialized education services from D112, but 15 receive services at a TrueNorth school. D112 also utilizes professional TrueNorth development services.

Including membership and student tuition expenses, TrueNorth services cost D112 about $1.9 million in the 2024–2025 school year and the district anticipates a comparable cost for the upcoming year, Ben Finfer, D112’s director of communications, said in an email.

Though the TrueNorth cooperative has operated well for decades, relationships between public school districts and special education cooperatives have “evolved” in recent years as a number have dissolved, reduced their size or reconstituted their purpose, Lubelfeld told the board.

Lisa Hirsh, a District 112 School Board member and liaison to the TrueNorth cooperative, said the collective’s financial model is a concern for some member districts like D225 as their TrueNorth membership effectively pays for administrators, property and services they don’t use. 

Moving forward, Lubelfeld and Hirsh are both meeting with TrueNorth committees on Wednesday to discuss next steps, such as possibly redrafting its financial or governing model, but Lubelfeld said he’s not sure what he’s going to learn and so he “has never been this concerned” about the cooperative.

In the meantime, Hirsh encouraged parents to reach out to their schools because there are “a lot of students” who stand to be impacted. 

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