A judge temporarily barred Crystal Lake Elementary District 47’s boundary committee from meeting Tuesday after a parent sued, alleging the committee shaping plans to overhaul the district’s schools met in secrecy 14 times.
Crystal Lake resident Joe Keegan, who is the parent of a District 47 student, filed the lawsuit against the school district in McHenry County Circuit Court last week and alleges it violated the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Open Meetings Act (OMA).
Keegan, who is represented by attorney Jordan Marsh of Marsh Law Group LLC in Chicago, filed an amended complaint and an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday asking a judge to require that the committee’s meetings be publicly noticed, open to the public and recorded in written minutes.
McHenry County Judge David Gervais granted the temporary restraining order on Tuesday morning and scheduled a full hearing for October 9 at 1:30 p.m.
“Until the hearing, the district can not hold a boundary committee meeting and the Board can not vote on the boundaries during that 10-day TRO period,” the district said in a statement Tuesday.
District 47 Superintendent Dr. Kathy J. Hinz announced in March 2024 that the district would use a boundary committee to review its school attendance boundaries in two phases, starting with its three middle schools and then moving to its elementary schools.
“The committee will be composed of board of education members, administration, staff, parents/guardians, and community members. Members are required to attend the following meetings to review data, maps, resources, and community feedback and create final boundary recommendations for the board,” Hinz said in the announcement to families.
“All applicants will be reviewed by a team of board members, building, and district administrators,” she said.
The school board approved middle school boundary changes recommended by the committee in December 2024, according to the lawsuit.
“After months of review and discussion of elementary boundaries, the Boundary Committee is presenting two recommendations,” Hinz said in a July 15 announcement.
One plan would pair up elementary schools so younger students attend one building and older students attend the other, according to the district.
The other plan would shift some boundaries and move the district’s dual-language program into one school, a Multilingual Language Academy at Coventry Elementary School.
“As you may know, the Boundary Committee, which I was a part of, has met periodically from January 2025 through May 2026, exploring different ideas, reviewing enrollment data, and talking through the pros and cons of various options concerning the elementary boundaries,” District 47 School Board President Dr. Debra Barton said in a July 20 email to Keegan.
Barton told Keegan in another email on July 23 that the board would be “discussing the data the committee used to develop our recommendations,” the lawsuit said.
The district’s response on August 25 to Keegan’s records request for the committee members’ names identified two school board members and seven administrators but redacted the name of every parent, staff member and community member, citing five FOIA exemptions without saying which one applied to what, the lawsuit said.
Hinz said in an internal email included in the records that the committee has 21 members and that only five of them had objected to the release of their names, according to the lawsuit.
Keegan filed a second request on September 2 seeking the date of every committee meeting and the public notice, agenda and minutes for each one.
The district responded on September 9 with a list of 14 committee meetings held between April 8, 2024 and August 4, 2026, 13 of them at the district’s CORE Center.
“Under the Open Meetings Act 5 ILCS 120/1.02 (OMA), advance public notice, agenda requirements, and approved meeting minutes apply only when a majority of a quorum of the Board is present, which was not the case with these meetings,” District 47 FOIA Officer Clare F. Bourne said in the response.
The district also produced sign-in sheets from the meetings with the name of every attendee redacted and did not cite any exemption for those redactions, the lawsuit said.
The district told families on September 14 that the committee would hold its final meeting October 6.
Keegan emailed Hinz and the board on September 21 asking whether that meeting would be held under the Open Meetings Act with public notice, a posted agenda and minutes. He then filed the lawsuit the next day.
“The Boundary Committee is not a public body or a subsidiary body of the Board of Education subject to the Open Meetings Act,” Hinz said in a reply to Keegan last Wednesday.
“The Boundary Committee is an ad hoc advisory group formed by the Superintendent for the purpose of collecting information and providing advice to the Superintendent. The Committee does not serve in a deliberative or investigatory capacity,” she said.
Hinz said the administration selected the committee’s members and the two board members on it participate at her request, not by action of the board.
The lawsuit said Hinz’s position departs from the district’s September 9 argument and conflicts with its 2024 announcements that board members would serve on the committee and help choose its members.
The lawsuit argues the committee is a public body because the district created it, controls it, hosts and feeds it and uses it to do the board’s work of setting attendance boundaries, meaning any gathering of six of its 21 members to discuss boundaries is a meeting under the law.
The district’s own board policy says “Board committee meetings shall comply with the Open Meetings Act,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also cites a binding 2025 opinion from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office that found an informal committee appointed by a mayor and including two aldermen was subject to the Open Meetings Act.
The lawsuit asks a judge to declare the committee a public body and order it to write minutes of its past meetings and finish its boundary review in public.
It also asks the court to order the district to release the withheld records and to impose civil penalties for each willful FOIA violation.
“I am not asking the court to stop the boundary process or to cancel any meeting. The motion asks that the committee’s meetings be noticed, open to the public, and recorded in minutes, as the Act requires,” Keegan told Lake and McHenry County Scanner.
The district canceled the October 6 meeting on Monday.
“The District has decided to cancel the October 6 meeting rather than spend taxpayer dollars litigating, on an emergency basis, whether that single meeting may proceed,” the district said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the plaintiff chose to move forward with the hearing anyway. A temporary restraining order is issued only based on the documents in front of the judge and any legal conclusion based on those documents is limited,” the district said after Tuesday’s hearing.
The district said it had no plans to hold a committee meeting before the October 9 court hearing and the order does not change its timeline, with the board still set to hear a presentation on the two recommendations at its October 19 meeting and vote on the boundaries in November.
“Our attorneys will respond to the plaintiff’s legal filings and public commentary in Court on October 9th. We will not otherwise comment on this litigation further,” the district said.
Any boundary changes the board approves would take effect in the 2027-2028 school year.