The Troy LaRaviere & Lindblom Ousted Principal Saga Continues
Troy LaRaviere, the president of the Chicago Principals and Adminstrators Association, spoke out once again at the July 26, 2023 Chicago Board of Education meeting in defense of the Lindblom principal who was abruptly fired last spring.
But this time LaRaviere, who made sure to note that he now represents an offical union of principals, was allowed to speak even beyond the normal time of a union official because he was removed twice from the last two board meetings by Board President Miguel del Valle. del Valle ordered LaRaviere removed because he said he made defamatory statements against Lindblom teachers and staff who testified against the former Principal Abdul Muhammad.
This time the new board of trustees appointed by new Mayor Brandon Johnson allowed LaRaviere to make his same fiery speech identifying “white teachers” and other staff, some of whom happened to be black but he did not mention this, who he claimed made false statements or violated laws themselves.
This different tactic follows the Chicago Teachers Union strategy to allow for protest and confrontation in a public forum, but then follow up with a vigorous fight in the courts. Several years ago CORE, the caucus that leads the teachers union, did the same thing when they protested the closure of many public schools during the years of Race to the Top privatization and the firing of hundreds of black teachers which they said was racial discrimination. Years later they prevailed in the courts when the judge ruled in favor of the fired black teachers. LaRaviere and his team are filing a lawsuit against the Chicago Public Schools and its alleged unjust racial discrimination against a number of other black principals who have been fired.
“I’m going to give this board some grace, but I’m not gonna let up on holding this board accountable for violating my member’s right to be heard and the public’s right to hear them,” LaRaviere said. “So we will be taking this board to court as an institution to answer for its blatant violations of the US Constitution in Illinois state law.”
LaRaviere then took off his glasses and looked at the board members after reading his script and said he has heard over the years of people’s “wild accusations” against principals and not one of them was ever stopped by the board.
“It wasn’t until we came up to defend principals to talk about the malfeasance of the law department that it became ok to violate the first amendment,” he said.
Now he has the Chicago Suntimes/WBEZ and Sarah Karp carrying his torch of the poor Chicago principals and the CPS witchhunt against them.
In a front page article on Aug 1 titled “Chicago Public Schools aggressive tactics for removing principals under the microscope,” Karp wrote an alarming story about the Chicago Public Schools harsh methods to remove black principals that are based on procedural and bureaucratic violations. Her reporting alleges plenty of discrimination because six of the nine principals removed are black. (One teacher said this is a dubious charge since the paper also reported that 45 percent of CPS principals are black, so even a race neutral set of nine fired principals would see four of them black.)
The story focused in the beginning on how fired Principal Muhammad was “devastated and ashamed” when he was abruptly fired even though he thought he was doing a “fine job.” The story mentioned a 10-page document of staff complaints against Muhammad, including odd hiring practices, safety concerns, poor background checks and special education reporting inaccuracies.
“Did the complaints about Muhammad’s management warrant such an aggressive set of actions by CPS that it overruled a Local School Council that wanted to keep him, resulted in the loss of his job at Lindblom and sullied his reputation — or could CPS have pursued less punitive measures?”
I then asked myself why didn’t Sarah Karp ask the teachers and staff who complained about this principal and how the school was mismanaged to warrant such drastic action? Nowhere in her article outside the 10 page complaint did she speak to anyone who supported CPS decision to remove the principal.
“I did not reach out to CTU,” Karp replied in an email after I asked her this question. “However, I did talk to the union rep from Lindblom and was in email/text communication with other teachers from Lindblom. The story did not really focus much on the teachers and so I did not mention that they did not comment on the record. Maybe I should have. There was a lot to get in there.”
Maybe I should have? This was about as one-sided a story you could get, where the Principal Union Leader is fighting the evil Chicago Public Schools. You can’t help but scratch your head after this article and say to yourself, what the hell was CPS thinking about removing this valiant principal. Why would these teachers complain?
I was absolutely shocked that she did not reach out to the Chicago Teachers Union who is reprsenting the very teachers and staff at Lindblom who have complained bitterly about this principal. While this story indeed just focused on the principals, why would you not ask the Chicago Teachers Union their opinion on CPS policy and defending teachers against abusive principals who now have a union led by the venerable fighter Troy LaRaviere.
Her story made the principals who have the power to hire and fire their employees into the victims.
Karp did interview others, including a former inspector general and the parent group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education (a close CTU ally), who sided with LaRaviere’s complaints about the removal.
But not asking the CTU about its opinion, when they can give their opinion on almost everything, that just didn’t sit right with me.
So I asked her again, why did she not contact the CTU?
She did not answer my follow-up question. She repeated what she wrote earlier that she just spoke to some teachers who did not want her to print anything on the record, but incredibly, fails to mention this in her article.
“(The Lindblom teachers) knew as a group that I wanted to talk to them and, citing legal advice, said they could not talk or even issue a statement,” Karp wrote back. “So at most I would only have a sentence saying they won't comment.”
But every self respecting journalist knows that is exactly what you must do to show you at least tried to reach out to the other side of the story. If someone is saying that they were unfairly fired, you talk to the other entity who fired them. If they say no comment, you write no comment. That way we as the reader know you tried to balance your story to get both sides. This was not just a battle between CPS and the Principals. There were other victims besides Principal Muhammad who were upset enough to demand this drastic action. Teachers in general are very fearful of criticizing the boss, so something was definitely not right here.
According to teachers off the record who I spoke with, the serious problems included Principal Muhammad’s poor leadership that resulted in losing half a million dollars in Title 1 funding for four positions, a ballroom filled with over 200 students and one substitute teacher, serious after school safety issues that the principal failed to address, frequent absences from the building for many key events, hiring new teaching assistants who seemed to be pitted against the existing staff members in the special education cluster program that created major havoc and anti-disability slurs that were not addressed.
Karp said her story was more about CPS tactics when they want to fire a principal.
“There is so much swirling between the teachers and this principal, including the accusations from the principal that they were retaliating for him discovering they were stealing money,” she wrote. “I don’t think the article would have been well-served to get into the weeds of the he said/she said.”
Fair enough.
Karp is an excellent journalist who has been reporting on Chicago education for years. She most likely has access to the Chicago teachers Facebook pages and open social media where teachers complain about problems, including abusive principals.
But the Suntimes now owned by WBEZ also has a close relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union which is another power player in the city. They have done some excellent reporting on the affect of the school closings in the black communities, and other social issues near and dear to the people.
Ultimately there is a power play here between three strong entities - the Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association and the Chicago Teachers Union.
Perhaps the Suntimes/WBEZ decided that speaking to CPS was the same as speaking to the CTU. If so, what does that mean to the teachers when their rights also are seriously violated? But last I checked, that’s not the case.