According to Plato, there are two requirements for the ideal public servant: wisdom and virtue. The Bible encourages public servants to act with integrity, justice, humility, accountability, and wisdom. Do our public servants have these qualities today? Does our President? Do our Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, our Governor, our Mayor? Do the functionaries who keep our government running at every level possess these qualities? Do our teachers?
What do you think?
We have a long tradition of honoring those in public service who sacrifice a big paycheck to serve the rest of us. Most have non-descript jobs, but our government could not function without them. Some risk their lives for us every day, like soldiers and police and firefighters. We honor all of them because their service is a public trust.
Those in public service place loyalty to our Constitution, our laws, and our ethical principles over public gain. They are expected, and most do, to avoid conflicts of interest, refrain from engaging in financial transactions (except for our Congressmen) using non-public Government information for their own gain, refuse to accept gifts from those they govern, and generally avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
I say, “most,” but I don’t know that about public servants now. “Most” was true forty years ago when I was in public service. There are some signs today that’s not true anymore.
Still, public servants are expected to do their job diligently, competently, and honestly, adhering to all laws and carrying out their duties impartially. Do they? What is your experience? Do our public servants still serve us?
The controversy in Naperville over the Owen Elementary School teacher, Madison Sabovik, formerly known as Stephen Sabovik, provides a case study in the state of public service in the U.S.
On October 20, 2024, Sabovik, using official Owen Elementary School stationery, sent a letter to the parents of all Owen students informing them that after 18 years at Owen, beginning October 23rd, he would be known to the students as “Ms. Sabovik” instead of Mr. Sabovik. He continued, “[s]tudents will also notice a change in my appearance starting that day.” In other words, he would start dressing as a woman on October 23rd.
Curiously, Sabovik wrote the letter in English and Telugu, according to Google Translate, one of 22 recognized languages of the Republic of India. Telugu is a Dravidian language spoken by approximately 96 million people in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Are there a large number of Telugu speakers in Naperville? Don’t most Indians speak English, too? I don’t get it, but I guess he was trying to be considerate of the Telugu speakers.
Sabovik’s announcement was such a shock to some parents that several pulled their children out of the school. Others who did not have that option remain upset. And many of the parents simply don’t know what to tell their children about Sabovik’s “transition.”
The school didn’t make any official announcement, although the fact that Sabovik sent out a letter on school stationery seems official to me. In addition, the Indian Prairie School District, of which Owen is part, sent a talking points memo to all Owen staff, which was made public by Awake Illinois. It offers no guidance or insight about the substantive issues that a so-called transition would raise among children, like “How can a man turn into a woman?” “Why does that happen?” “Is it going to happen to me?” “Can she have a baby now?”
Instead, the District talking points address surface issues—respect, privacy, and support. The district also informed the staff that any media inquiry must be referred to Lisa Barry, the District’s Executive Director of Communications.
The District doesn’t have much choice but to retain Sabovik as an employee. Not only does state law require it, but a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County determined that transgenders cannot be discriminated against in employment based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The court ruled that refusing to hire or deciding to fire someone based on sexual identity violates that law. Justices Alito and Kavanaugh dissented, but that’s the law unless or until Congress expressly excludes sexual identity and/or orientation from the protections of Title VII.
Another more applicable approach would be for the American Psychological Association (APA) to classify gender dysphoria as a mental illness once again, as it was until 2013. Until then, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual classified Gender Identity Disorder (GID) as a mental illness. You don’t have to hire someone who has a mental illness, and any male who thinks he’s really a woman or any female who thinks she’s a man is out of touch with reality. And that is mental illness, at least one form of it.
In 2013, GID was renamed Gender Dysphoria (GD) and reclassified as a medical disorder instead of a mental illness. That allowed those with Gender Dysphoria to have any medical treatment they might need to be still covered by insurance. In that action, the APA redefined reality. These “experts” determined that men really can become women and that women really can become men.
This is a preposterous belief. But it is one that our Illinois government has adopted because of the governor, the representatives, and the senators we elected. There is little or no pushback by school board members, officials, or teachers because the leftist ideology dominates the entire public education system. This ideological-based agenda is being pushed to transform our national governing system from one where the government is accountable to the people to one where the people are accountable to the government.
It has become a mess.
Madison, formerly known as Steve, Sabovik does not seem interested in serving the public—the students, the parents, his fellow teachers. He seems more interested in everyone else serving him. He’s been at the school for 18 years, so apparently, he feels comfortable in that location, in that job. It is his own body that is uncomfortable to him. He wanted a change, and he expected everyone to accommodate it. The law requires it. The school can’t get rid of him. The parents, co-workers, and children have to go along. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to him the effect his “transition” will have on the children too young to understand what is happening. Nor does he seem to care about the challenge to parents or co-workers who struggle to find answers they don’t have that might help their children or their students navigate this strange situation.
Oh well.
This is an example of a public servant who wants to be served rather than to serve.
When looking into the situation at Owen Elementary, I wanted to ensure I had all the facts straight. One of the first things I did was try to confirm that Sabovik still worked at the school. Like many states, Illinois has a law requiring specific information be made available about any public employee. In fact, for teachers and administrators of public schools, 105 ILCS 5/34-18.38 requires local boards of education to
“report to the State Board of Education, on or before October 1 of each year, the base salary and benefits of the general superintendent of schools or chief executive officer and all administrators and teachers employed by the school district. For the purposes of this Section, “benefits” includes without limitation vacation days, sick days, bonuses, annuities, and retirement enhancements.
“Prior to this annual reporting to the State Board of Education, the information must be presented at a regular board meeting, subject to applicable notice requirements, and then posted on the Internet website of the school district, if any.”
According to this law, every school district in Illinois must post the annual compensation of every administrator and teacher on their district website. I went to their site page to confirm that Sabovik remains a teacher in the district. To my surprise, his name is not there under Madison or Steve.
I checked the Illinois State Board of Education site to ensure he is a licensed teacher. He is under Madison A. Sabovik, but his current employment is not shown.
I contacted the Indian Prairie School District to determine if Sabovik is still working for Owen Elementary. The person who answered the phone referred me to Lisa Barry, the Communications Director for the District. I called her but got her voicemail. It was a Friday, and I heard nothing back.
On Monday, 12/9, I wrote Barry the following:
Ms. Barry,
I am a writer for the Illinois Family Institute (this is my author page: https://illinoisfamily.org/author/?id=68749), and I am working on an article that, in part, involves the issue of Madison Sabovik, formerly known as Steve Sabovik. I checked on your website to confirm Sabovik is still a teacher, but the name does not appear as Steve or Madison. The name has already been changed on the state license. Is Sabovik still working for your district? If so, why isn’t the name listed on this document posted on your website: EIS Administrator and Teacher Salary and Benefits Report – School Year 2024?
Please let me know as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Tom Hampson
In less than an hour, Ms. Barry replied:
Good afternoon, Mr. Hampson.
The Base Salary and Benefits Report does not include all licensed positions, LMC Director being one. None of District 204’s LMC Directors appear on the report. This is an automatically generated report from the Illinois State Board of Education. The district does not have the ability to include or exclude any positions or individuals.
Thank you,
Lisa
I replied:
Good Afternoon, Ms. Barry. Thank you for your quick response.
Do you have any idea why some positions are excluded from the report? I don’t see any exemptions in the Illinois Law. If you don’t have an answer, could you direct me to someone at ISBE who might be able to explain.
Thank you,
Tom
Before Lisa wrote back, I had several email messages back and forth with an official for the Illinois State Board of Education. ISBE sent me the list of all administrators and educators they received from Indian Prairie School District (Sabovik was not on the list), then received this email from Lisa:
Good morning,
I am not familiar with why some positions are excluded from the report. However, I did locate this contact page on the ISBE website which allows you to submit a question and also has contact information for each department within ISBE. I hope this is helpful.
Best regards,
Lisa
I replied:
Miss Barry,
I emailed back and forth with Maureen Font of ISBE and she said all they do is take the information that the districts send them and put them in a spreadsheet. So evidently any employees that do not appear on your website were employees you did not submit for inclusion. In that regard, would you please send me the missing information on Madison Sabovik.
Thank you,
Tom Hampson
By now, it was Wednesday, December 11. Lisa wrote back:
Good morning, Mr. Hampson.
The information you requested can be obtained through submitting a FOIA request.
Thank you,
Lisa
I filed an FOIA but also wrote this to Lisa:
The law requires it to be posted.
She did not reply.
I also checked to see if the salary and benefits for Lisa Barry are listed on Indian Prairie’s website. They are not. I have no idea who else is not listed for Indian Prairie or any other school district, either. So, I wrote to the Illinois Attorney General to complain that the district is not compliant with the law. I received this response:
Dear Mr. Hampson,
My name is Christina Lucente-McCullough, and I am responding to an e-mail you sent this morning to the Public Access Bureau.
Unfortunately, our office cannot direct the School District to provide you with this information. For our office to intervene, you would need to first submit a FOIA request to the School District. If this request is denied, our office has the authority to review this response once we receive a completed Request for Review.
At this time, I would recommend that you submit a FOIA request asking the School District for this employee’s payroll records from the past year. Although it might not include this employee in its list of salaries, the School District should have basic payroll records for all employees.
I hope this information helped answer your question.
Very Truly Yours,
Christina Lucente-McCullough
Assistant Attorney General
Public Access Bureau
Illinois Attorney General’s Office
115 S. LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL 60603
I replied to Ms. Christina Lucente-McCullough:
Ms. Lucente-McCullough,
Thank you very much for your response. What can citizens do to force a school district to comply with the law? Do they have to file a law suit? Allowing districts to leave people off their payroll lists seems corrupt to me.
I will file an FOIA request, but the issue of allowing districts to disregard the law at will is a problem the AG should address.
Thanks again,
Tom Hampson
I heard nothing back from the Attorney General’s office. It took another week (FOIA allows five business days, so the response complied with that) to get a reply from the Indian Prairie School District, which was two whole weeks since I started looking for the information.
In the FOIA request, I asked for information that is supposed to be published on IPSD’s website, which includes salary and benefits, but only received Sabovik’s and Barry’s wages. The additional benefits were not included. Sabovik, a 40-year-old with a master’s degree, gets $109,000 annually, which is $26,000 above the average for his age and education, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Barry, a 50-year-old with a master’s degree, receives a salary of $140,000, which is $50,000 above the average for someone her age and education. These salaries are in line with others in the school district, but significantly above national averages for their ages and education levels.
Let’s recap. Sabovik, a public servant, looked out for himself with no concern over how his actions affected the children or anyone else. No sacrifice for him. Nor was there any sacrifice in his pay, which is just shy of 33% more than what others in his circumstances receive.
Barry, the Executive Director of Communications for the School District, provided no assistance whatsoever. She merely answered my emails and, in doing so, provided entirely inaccurate information. Moreover, by failing to correct the public record on employee pay and benefits, Barry was complicit in the district’s violation of 105 ILCS 5/34-18.38. Where’s the public service? Also, Barry’s salary is more than a third higher than the average of similarly situated people in the United States. No sacrifice there either.
That takes me to the ISBE official, Maureen Font. While she was accurate when she told me that ISBE posts the salary and benefits received from the districts, she did nothing to instruct the Indian Prairie School District to correct the record. Assistant Attorney General Lucente-McCullough was also indifferent to the violation by the Indian Prairie School District. What public service did these two provide?
I’m not sure what public servant, or servants, allowed Sabovik to use school stationery and school resources to get his self-serving letters to parents. At least one did. That person and the four I encountered provided no actual public service whatsoever. Every one of them just went through the motions. What they all did was a disservice.
Is this ok with you? Is it all right for public officials to ignore the law, fail to enforce it, drag their feet when responding to public inquiries, provide wrong information, and hassle the public instead of helping them? Do you still think those who work for our schools—at least Indian Prairie schools—are underpaid? Do they make less than if they had worked in the private sector?
According to the state report card maintained by ISBE, only 53% of students at Owen Elementary School are proficient in English language at grade level. Only 50.9% are at grade level in math. So, the educator performance isn’t that great either.
Poor service, poor performance. That is our government. Where is the diligence, competence, and honesty? Where is the wisdom and virtue? Where is their compliance with and enforcement of the law?
Is anyone in government today motivated to serve the public? I don’t see any evidence of it in this case.
Shouldn’t we do something about it?
