Evanston Township High School District 202 Board of Education member Jonathan Baum said during a recent meeting that he was “embarrassed” the administration had not delivered on a promise to report back to the community regarding an internal investigation into locker thefts
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allegedly committed by ETHS safety staff.At a Sept. 6 meeting, assistant superintendent and ETHS Principal Marcus Campbell said the district invited students to participate in a focus group in late May after videos surfaced on social media that appeared to show two staff members stealing items from students’ lockers. The videos were recorded on cellphones students left inside their lockers.
According to a memo from staff, all ETHS students were invited to the focus group to ask “questions relating to how they felt about the incident and how it impacted them personally.”
Campbell said only one student showed up to the group on May 24 and shared with administrators that he had items stolen from his locker in the past and had reported it to a grade-level dean.
“It was a very short conversation with the student,” Campbell said. He said the district also provided an opportunity for students and parents to voice their concerns about locker thefts via a comment box online, which resulted in very limited feedback.
“Because only one student participated during the scheduled focus group times, there are no results to present,” the memo from ETHS staff states.
“I’m concerned because this report is not the report we promised to the community on May 23. We had this clamor for an outside investigation and we said, ‘No, we can do it ourselves,'” Baum said. “[Board president Pat Savage-Williams] read a statement outlining a very detailed process we’ll go through looking at how past reports were handled and allegations about safety personnel were addressed or not addressed.”
Baum added that he was particularly interested in why the students felt the need to take it upon themselves and use their cellphones to catch the perpetrators in the act.
After the videos surfaced online in late April, two safety department staff members were placed on administrative leave; one was subsequently fired and the other resigned in mid-May, according to Savage-Williams. Parents and students alike complained at board meetings after the videos surfaced online that locker thefts had been an ongoing issue at ETHS for over a decade.
In response to the thefts and outcry from parents, the district implemented changes in its protocols and procedures regarding locker rooms and the mechanisms by which theft is reported at the high school. Those changes include ensuring that a master key to school lockers is kept in the protection of the physical education department chairperson at all times. If a student fails to secure their locker, a safety officer must take their belongings and place them in a bag in a locked cage area until the student can retrieve them. No locked or unlocked locker will be opened without any administrator present, per the revised protocols.
Additionally, an online reporting system for thefts ensures that “I see every theft that happens in the school no matter where it’s at, we can track and pinpoint where that information is coming from and we make sure the administration takes appropriate responses,” Campbell said.
Board member Gretchen Livingston said she was also “surprised and a little bit disappointed” in the lack of a substantive report from the high school’s administration. She wondered whether staff had interviewed faculty “who may have had some involvement or insight into how reports of theft had been handled in the past.”
ETHS District 202 Supt. Eric Witherspoon said the district conducted “a very thorough investigation on the personnel end” that included “countless interviews with safety staff, interviews with teaching staff and with administrative staff.”
The investigation “came down to two people,” he said, adding that he would not provide any additional details in open session because it was a personnel matter.
“There are two thieves but it is not down to two people. We are talking about a management system,” Baum said.
Campbell said there “clearly was a breakdown in communication” and that he didn’t believe he was meant to report on the district’s personnel investigation.
If the changes implemented at the high school are working to prevent and track reports of thefts, Witherspoon said the data gathered this year will bear that out.
“If our changes are not working, we’ll see evidence of that, too. If they are not working, we’ll have to be very proactive and reactive and figure out where the system is not working and what more we need to do,” he said.
At the request of board members, Witherspoon promised to return to provide the board either at mid-year or at the end of the year with additional data regarding the number of thefts reported at the high school and how that’s changed over the years.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelancer.