Country Club Hills School District 160, which had the start of its school year postponed by construction delays, has placed its superintendent on paid administrative leave and appointed an interim superintendent to run the district, officials said.
Griff Powell, a retired school administrator with 25 years of superintendent experience in Illinois and New York, was brought in to replace Superintendent Sandra Thomas on Sept. 5.
Powell, who has held seven interim superintendencies since retiring — most recently at West Harvey-Dixmoor School District 147 — is under contract through the end of the 2017-2018 school year.
He’ll be paid $1,000 per day for no more than 90 days for overseeing the three schools, and will not receive health or other benefits outside of reimbursements for travel, according to the terms of his contract.
“So far, I’ve been at all three buildings and I see some very committed staff members who are passionate about working with young people,” Powell said. “I see a lot of good things going on here.”
Powell, who will be working two or three days each week, said his primary goal is to create some stability in the district until a permanent superintendent is named.
It’s unclear whether the district intends to reinstate Thomas, who had served as District 160 superintendent since 2014, or seek a new permanent leader.
District spokeswoman Tracy Lett-Foreman would only confirm that Thomas had been placed on leave, but said she did not know when or why the decision was made.
When reached for comment, school board member Margo E. Brown directed all questions to Lett-Foreman. None of the other board members contacted immediately returned requests for comment.
Thomas, who made $173,350 last year, was last listed as the district’s superintendent on its Aug. 15 meeting agenda. She authored a letter to parents the same week informing them that the start of school would be pushed back from Aug. 16 to Aug. 21 due to “unforeseen construction delays.”
Days earlier, the Cook County Department of Environmental Control had lodged a complaint with the Illinois Department of Public Health alleging improper asbestos removal at District 160’s Southwood Middle School, 18635 Lee. St., IDPH records show.
Divya Little, an IDPH spokeswoman, said the department investigated the complaint and issued an emergency stop work order at Southwood from Aug. 14-17, until it was determined that the issue had been abated.
Thomas’ letter to parents about the postponement of school made no mention of the asbestos concern, but did say the district still needed to “complete air quality assessments” and was working with IDPH and the fire department to determine when the building would be safe for use.
Director of business operations Kenya Austin said Monday that asbestos abatement was not the primary reason the first week of classes were canceled. Rather, the holdup was due to delays with several different projects, she said.
“It was a little bit of everything,” Austin said, citing the off-site death of an environmental consultant and the resignation of members of a contracted cleaning crew, among other issues.
She said the middle school had been placed under a stop work order as a precautionary measure because the contractor performing the asbestos work had died unexpectedly before providing IDPH with the final paperwork indicating that the classrooms were free of asbestos.
Austin said after she learned of the contractor’s death, she immediately called in another company to perform an air quality assessment, which came back free of asbestos.
“We got it redone and the air quality came back fine,” she said. “The classrooms were back open in 24 hours.”
Little, the IDPH spokeswoman, said she could not confirm Austin’s account, but that the department would release a report with its findings once its investigation into the matter had concluded.
Powell, the interim superintendent, said that regardless of why the start of school had been delayed, the issue had been rectified and he was focused on keeping the district running.
“What I try to do is just get people to focus on what their job is, and that’s servicing the children that we have responsibility for,” he said.
Twitter @ZakKoeske