I opened a case with Salesforce and they state there is nothing wrong with the standard functionality and that all settings were appropriate to escalate cases.  they recommended  open a ticket with Skuid.

Would you mind granting us login rights to your org so we can look into this for you?  Here are some instructions: 

http://help.skuidify.com/m/getting-started/l/182412-getting-help-how-to-grant-skuid-login-rights-to-…

Access granted.  Thanks for taking a look at it.  I am still in trial mode; will be subscribing by end of week.

You don’t have access to the isEsacalated field on the case object.  This is why all the javascript is failing.  

In Group and Professional Edition the only way you get access to fields is by putting them in the standard page layout.  I’m not going to do this for you because I don’t want to impact your users.  But as soon as you put the field in your layout - the Skuid pages should work for you. 

But as you go forward,  just know that in order to gain access to fields in your skuid pages -you will need to put them in standard layouts first.  (This is not the case with Enterprize edition and higher - where field level access is governed at the profile level). 

Thanks so much; that is good to know.  Probably why I am having issues on other pages.  this applies to all fields, correct, standard and customer?  Thanks again.