By Inside Publications
The Chicago Board of Training has agreed to pay $700,000 to John Thuet and Michelle Brumfield – the 2 former Lincoln Park Excessive College [LPHS] principals abruptly fired in 2020 – closing their circumstances that lasted greater than 5 years. This got here after an unpleasant interval on the North Aspect highschool after claims of “grownup on scholar sexual misconduct” shook the college neighborhood.
The circumstances precipitated turmoil at LPHS with college students and fogeys staging walkouts and protests. The incident price Thuet and Brumfield their jobs and reputations and revealed a flawed response by CPS to sexual misconduct claims from Jan. 2020. At the moment, CPS suspended Pat Gordon (the boys basketball coach), Donovan Robinson (assistant basketball coach), Larry Washington (women basketball coach), John Johnson (dean), and fired Thuet and Brumfield.
Thuet and Brumfield have been fired – with out discover, warning, or investigation – for what turned out to be unsubstantiated “sexual misconduct” claims made by a prime CPS administrator, claims the Workplace of Inspector Common [OIG] later discovered to be false, retaliatory, and “troubling.”
On Feb. 3, 2020, CPS hosted a public assembly at LPHS to debate the principals’ terminations and the others’ suspensions. On the assembly, CPS posted and used slides put collectively by Camie Pratt, the pinnacle of the Workplace of Pupil Safety [OSP], which acknowledged there have been claims of “grownup on scholar sexual misconduct.”
However because the OIG report would later element, there was solely ever one declare of “grownup on scholar sexual misconduct.” That criticism was truly made by Pratt towards Washington, who on the time coached Pratt’s daughter on the LPHS women’ group. Pratt alleged {that a} stray textual content Washington exchanged with Pratt’s daughter about basketball follow someway constituted “sexual misconduct.”
On the neighborhood assembly, Deborah Spraggins, the chief investigator of OSP, who reported to Pratt, informed the viewers there have been additionally allegations of “grownup on scholar sexual misconduct.”
However in so doing, she riled up the assembled crowd.
Spraggins neither recognized towards whom the allegation was made nor that the claimed “sexual misconduct” associated to a stray textual content message. She additionally didn’t reveal that the complainant was her boss, Pratt, the pinnacle of OSP.
OIG would later chastise Pratt and Spraggins in its report, calling them liars and detailing how they performed a “secret off-the-books investigation” associated to Pratt’s complaints involving her personal daughter.
Earlier this yr, Chicago regulation agency Ginsberg Jacobs LLC, led by Invoice Choslovsky, efficiently petitioned for Thuet and Brumfield to be faraway from CPS’ “Do Not Rent” listing, which departing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez granted. And final week, the CPS Board authorised $350,000 payouts to every of them.
It’s maybe a bittersweet finish to a protracted and painful saga for Thuet and Brumfield, who have been abruptly fired with out even being informed what that they had performed unsuitable.
“The selection for CPS shouldn’t be both defending college students or treating their academics, coaches, and principals with dignity and a few due course of. It must do each. That’s the final word lesson of this five-year saga,” mentioned Choslovsky.
Again in 2020, the claimed “scandal” generated citywide publicity because the principals have been fired and 4 coaches and deans suspended. It took 5 years to uncover the reality, and in the long run the one actual “scandal” was inside CPS’s prime administrative suite, as its personal Workplace of Inspector Common uncovered in its 90-page bombshell report that in flip led to CPS settling all of the circumstances.
The OIG report acknowledged that “Pratt’s and Spraggins’s conduct on this matter basically undermined OSP’s integrity and equity and jeopardized public belief in CPS. Furthermore, by investigating [her own daughter’s] enjoying time beneath the quilt of the LPHS boys’ group investigation, Pratt and Spraggins abused their positions.”
In March 2020, Dean John Johnson was reinstated. In Might, CPS’s OIG accomplished its investigation of Washington, totally clearing him of the false allegation of “grownup on scholar sexual misconduct.” In June, Washington and Dean Donovan Robinson have been reinstated. In July 2020, CPS fired Coach Gordon. Then in Jan. 2021, Johnson, Washington, Gordon, and Robinson filed go well with towards CPS.
In March 2023, an impartial arbitrator issued a 66-page opinion admonishing CPS, saying “As a gap commentary, the undersigned notes that CPS’s total course of conduct on this case . . . was somewhat astounding.”
The impartial arbitrator decided that the neighborhood notices CPS issued on the time have been “overtly false.”
In Aug. 2023, CPS settled its circumstances with Dean Donovan Robinson and Dean John Johnson for $1 million and in addition issued written statements to every.
Then on June 28, 2024, the OIG issued a 90-page report chastising CPS for its mishandling of all issues at LPHS, together with the terminations of Thuet and Brumfield, which it known as “very alarming,” noting that a few of its written findings included that “OSP’s off-the-books investigation relating to allegations pertaining to CPS and the ladies’ group influenced the terminations of Thuet and Brumfield. These terminations have been understood to be associated to OSP’s misconduct investigation involving the boys’ group. . . [that] Brumfield was fired (together with Thuet) earlier than the SAU may interview her.”
When the OIG finally interviewed Thuet and Brumfield for this investigation, they every informed the OIG that they by no means acquired any rationalization for his or her termination.
At a Feb. 2020 assembly with the LPHS College Council, when tensions have been boiling, “OSP bootstrapped the justification of Thuet and Brumfield’s terminations on supposedly ‘totally substantiated’ misconduct associated to CPS’s allegations. The OIG’s investigations of those allegations weren’t even near being accomplished.”
Final January, Thuet and Brumfield filed a petition looking for elimination from the DNH listing. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez granted their petition, eradicating them from the DNH listing in Might. Then final week, the CPS Board agreed to pay Thuet and Brumfield $700,000.
