After a federal court last week ordered the reinstatement of Tilton School Principal Debrona Banks–handing the 10-month-old Chicago School Reform Board its biggest defeat yet–lawyers and watchdog groups began studying other cases in which the administration may have exceeded its authority.
The closest parallel may be the highly publicized removal of Englewood High School Principal Warner Birts earlier this month.
If Birts had not voluntarily resigned last week, he might have used the ruling to get his old job back, a school board attorney said.
“That decision could have helped him, but I’m not sure he wanted to go back to that place, and he has resigned too,” said school system attorney Bob Markin. “At this point, it’s sort of a moot chance.”
Last week’s court ruling is unlikely to change what happened to Birts or to the only local school council ever to be disbanded. That happened at Prosser High last year.
In the future, however, the ruling will likely change the procedures the school system uses against troubled schools, officials said.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras said the school board does not have final approval over a local school council’s contract with a principal. It also said the board could not remove a principal without putting the school on probation and holding a hearing.
To school system administrators, the judge’s decision simply clarifies rules they must follow under the Chicago School Reform Act of 1995. Schools chief Paul Vallas said the ruling won’t slow the system’s crackdown on poorly performing schools and weak principals.
To take corrective action against the principal or councils of the 27 schools now in remediation, the school system will have to put them on probation and then hold a public hearing, school officials said.
Putting a school on probation is as easy as placing a school in remediation, taking only a declaration by Vallas.
“It just means I’m going to use the powers of probation,” Vallas said. “We are contemplating putting a few on probation anyway.”
To local-control advocates, however, the ruling provided them with their best ammunition yet to fend off the school system when it takes aggressive action against local school councils and their principals.
“This decision should send the board of trustees a message that their role is an important but limited one. Local schools and councils have rights,” said Donald Moore, executive director of the advocacy group Designs for Change.
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In the cases of Banks at Tilton School and Birts at Englewood High, both principals were removed from schools that were in remediation and not on probation.
Birts stirred controversy last year when news stories told of a school program that enlisted gang members as hall monitors. But the program went awry when the gang members beat students as punishment for breaking school rules.
Banks was removed for refusing to cooperate with a remediation team trying to correct financial, educational and administrative problems at the West Side school.
Last week’s ruling may have a bearing on another lawsuit, this one filed by two members of the Prosser Vocational High School council that was declared dysfunctional and disbanded by the school board last October. A new local council was elected in December.
Former council members Danuta Wasilewska and Edna Purches filed suit against the board in January, demanding reinstatement to the council.
They were joined in the suit by plaintiffs Eric Outten, a council member at both Hirsch Metro High School and Burnside Scholastic Academy, and Jan Budzeiszewski, a council member at Galileo Scholastic Academy. Although the school board has not taken action against their councils, the plaintiffs claim that the board’s action at Prosser endangers all local school councils across the city.
Laurie Elkin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that Kocoras’ statement that the board had exceeded its authority in removing Banks could help the council members’ suit.
“In our case, as well, we believe that the statute requires a hearing before removing somebody,” Elkin said Friday.
U.S. District Judge Elaine Bukro, who is hearing the Prosser case, denied a preliminary injunction in February to reinstate the two council members, saying they had waited too long.
But Elkin said the merits of the case have not been addressed.
“What we’re asking for now is a declaration that (the council members) are entitled to due process,” Elkin said.
The Banks decision may also have a broader effect on the way all Chicago public school principals are hired, according to one advocate.
Zarina O’Hagin, of the Lawyers School Reform Advisory Project, said that a new uniform contract for principals proposed by the school board this month runs counter to Kocoras’ reasoning.
The new standard contract, which the board is studying, would require the board’s signature on every principal’s contract before it took effect.
Kocoras, however, ruled that the board has no statutory right to final approval in the hiring of principals. That right, the judge wrote, belongs to local school councils.
“As far as settling the balance of power, Kocoras was pretty clear on this,” O’Hagin said. “I think this case is very good for local school councils.”