Ousted D149 board member vows fight

Ghani contends vote wrongfully removed her

A board member in Dolton Elementary District 149 said she plans to fight her ouster from the school board following a recent vote that she maintains was illegal.

The school board held a special meeting Nov. 2 and “convicted” Rayya Ghani, by a 4-2 vote, of charges including official misconduct and violating school board policies regarding board member conduct.

“I was elected by the voters of Calumet City and Dolton,” Ghani said, contending the board doesn’t have the authority to remove her. “It’s a totally illegal move and I know they cannot remove me from office.”

The move comes 19 months after the board voted to expel Wilbur Tillman, its current president, but then later dropped the move, according to a district spokesman.

One of the charges leveled by the district alleged Ghani pushed through a 6% raise for a “favored district employee” without the full board’s approval, and that she had confronted a fellow board member at his home following a meeting “in order to harass and bully him” regarding a vote at a meeting.

The district serves 2,200 elementary and middle school students in Calumet City and Dolton.

The district said that in finding Ghani guilty of the charges, the board removed her as a board member and declared her seat vacant.

Ghani, who works as a college recruiter for South Suburban College in South Holland, said she plans to hire an attorney and contest the District 149 vote.

She has been a school board member since 2006 and was elected by fellow board members as board president in May 2021. At a board meeting in July, however, board member Tillman was installed as president.

The district, in a news release, said the charges against Ghani came after a two-month investigation by a law firm working for the district, which involved “a review of hundreds of documents, emails, texts and witness interviews.”

“The evidence presented at the special board hearing was sufficiently disturbing that the board majority was forced to convict Ghani on all six charges and to remove Ghani from the board, effective immediately,” Tillman said in the release.

The district said chief among the charges, bringing the board’s ruling of official misconduct, was Ghani had “inappropriately directed” a district employee receive a 6% pay hike “despite knowing the Board did not approve such a raise.”

Ghani said the board was notified in January the employee planned to retire after the 2024-2025 school year, and had requested to boost her pay during her final three years. Such an increase would have a corresponding impact on increasing her pension.

According to the district’s investigation, the board, at its March 16 meeting approved a retirement agreement with the employee, but there were no documents identifying terms of the agreement and no supporting documents were uncovered during the investigation by the Del Galdo Law Group.

Board members were interviewed as part of the investigation and none of them said they agreed to the 6% raise, noting it would have been “exorbitant,” as similar employees were getting raises of 2% or 3%, according to the district.

Ghani, interviewed as part of the investigation, also said the board did not approve the pay increase, according to the district.

However, the employee, interviewed as part of the investigation, said she met at some point after the March board meeting with Ghani and Shelly Davis-Jones, at that time the outgoing district superintendent who was due to be replaced July 1 by Maureen White, and was told the annual pay hikes had been approved.

The investigation turned up a June 22 text message from Ghani to a district consultant that the consultant interpreted as a request that the raise be reflected on the employee’s next paycheck in July, according to the district.

The consultant, in an email the following day to the school district’s interim business manager, instructed the business manager to include the raise on the employee’s next paycheck, according to the district.

Ghani, Davis-Jones and White were among those copied on the email, according to the district.

Ghani said Thursday she never saw that email, noting she had been using a different district email address since being named president, and denied the text message gave a directive to raise the employee’s salary. She said the text was regarding pay issues concerning other district employees.

She also denied ever having met with the employee and Davis-Jones to assure the employee the salary increase had been approved despite the board action in March.