Fired Winnetka School Teacher Gets $71,000 in Settlement
David Wartik, a former fourth grade teacher at Hubbard Woods Elementary School, has received $71,000 in a settlement with Winnetka School District 36.
Winnetka School District 36 has reached a settlement with David Wartik, a fourth grade teacher whom the school fired last spring, according to the Chicago Tribune. The school will pay Wartik $71,000, and the agreement calls for silence from both sides, with the exception of this statement released by District 36 to the Chicago Tribune:
"The Board of Education terminated David Wartik for insubordinate and unprofessional conduct. David Wartik denied the charges and requested a hearing before an impartial hearing officer, as was his right under the Illinois School Code. Prior to a scheduled three-day hearing, he and the District entered into a settlement agreement that included his withdrawal of the request for hearing."
A Patch article from April 2012 noted that the Winnetka Public Schools Board voted unanimously to dismiss Wartik in mid-March. Wartik, who had been teaching at Hubbard Woods Elementary for 12 years, had been on leave at the time due to concerns about the Evanston police investigation into a possible incident that happened in the late 1990s at a private North Shore school.
The board dismissed him because of what it termed as Wartik's "purposeful obstruction" of the district's investigation, not because of the police investigation itself.
The police investigation was dropped in early April 2012.
HW Parent
5:36 am on Thursday, January 3, 2013
He should have received a lot more than $71,000, he got railroaded. Great Teacher.
jacquelyn Gibbons
9:17 am on Thursday, January 3, 2013
HW PARENT
Should have received more, much more. Totally railroaded by a few on the caucus in cahoots with the board. They all still remain in their positions, shameful...
Great teacher !
Camera
11:59 am on Monday, April 8, 2013
Not the first time they've done something like this.....and won't be the last. He wasn't really that great of a teacher anyway, and if he did even half of the destroying of records and didn't follow a 2002 directive as well, means he had a history. No matter how much they paid him off with, he is now tainted goods....anywhere he goes, a simple search for David Wartik will show this controversy. IMHO, both sides behaved badly, but the board and the district since the days of then Sup Mary Hermann have gone to hell in a handbasket, this simply being on prime example of the payoffs D36 has done to get rid of folks they don't want around.