The latest effort from some Hinsdale High School District 86 parents and community members pushing for the resignation of Superintendent Tammy Prentiss is a petition with close to 1,000 signatures calling for her removal.
The petition was started by former District 86 board president, Kay Gallo, who wrote in part on the website, “through her deliberate misrepresentations, Superintendent Prentiss attempted to advance her extreme DE & I agenda by “equity shaming” District 86 and creating a false media narrative that damaged the reputation of Hinsdale and all other the communities comprising D86.”
Opponents of Prentiss have been rallying against her for some time now, but the effort was bolstered after Valda Valbrun, an anti-racism consultant with Valbrun Consulting Group, withdrew a proposal to provide diversity, equity and inclusion training to faculty, and Prentiss read the withdrawal letter out loud at a Jan. 13 board meeting.
The letter alluded to disparaging online comments from folks in the community which made Valbrun feel unsafe.
“Tammy Prentiss made a decision to read the letter. What did she think was going to be accomplished by doing that other than chaos and division? I think she’s shown bad judgment,” said Yvonne Mayer, District 86 community member who has been vocal about her opposition to Prentiss for months.
Part of the controversy surrounding the situation is based on two sentences in Valbrun’s letter, which many on the petition’s website believe were “added” by Prentiss.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by a community member, the district released records on Jan. 31 showing that Valbrun emailed Prentiss on Jan. 12 with her letter of withdrawal.
It’s not clear if any correspondence or communication took place outside of the email thread, but the FOIA indicated that Prentiss emailed Valbrun a revised withdrawal statement on Jan. 13, with a note saying, “Please preview.”
The added sentence in question reads: “I got several messages yesterday and really think Hinsdale is a dangerous place and would not be physically comfortable there.”
At the time of the FOIA request, district officials said the letter was reworked at Valbrun’s ask.
“Nobody knows, this is why it’s so important that the BOE do an investigation and inform the community what are the facts,” Mayer said. “How do you go from receiving a letter and then reading a different letter? Was there communication exchanged between that? No one knows.”
Based on previous reporting by Pioneer Press, Valbrun unexpectedly received “nasty” direct messages on her personal social media platforms on Jan. 12., which is when she decided to step back and send an email to act as a formal withdrawal.
Valbrun said she received hate mail, threats, direct messages on Twitter and friend requests on Facebook from those with a Hinsdale ZIP code between Jan. 12 and Jan. 13., after a Facebook post in which Valbrun condemned the Republican Party began to circulate around the District 86 community.
In the “reasons for signing” section on the Change.org petition to remove the District 86 leader, several of Prentiss’ opponents cite the handling of the DEI consultant situation including the “altered letter,” while several more think she’s not fit to lead a high-caliber district on the basis of credentials.
Others in the Hinsdale community, like Reid McCollum, think the movement against Prentiss is a product of backlash over the district’s diversity and inclusion work, as opposed to being rooted in the superintendent’s qualifications.
“It’s easy for them to go after the superintendent … they can’t go after a Black DEI consultant who wrote a letter because that would be pretty obvious racial backlash,” McCollum said. “So they go after the superintendent and fabricate some sort of story with FOIA documents that she altered the consultant’s letter, then there’s plausible deniability for what is just utter white fragility and backlash. It’s like, you’re out of a textbook.”
McCollum, whose children attend District 181 and will later attend Hinsdale Central, said he’s much more focused on fighting misinformation and the “grossly inappropriate accusations” than choosing a side. But he is convinced that most people who are opposed to Prentiss’ DEI efforts, deflect the purpose of equity work by making it about the types of people chosen to provide the training.
“There are people that say ‘hey, we’re happy with equity, but it can’t possibly be a DEI consultant that has ever posted anything negative about Trump on Facebook.'” McCollum explained. “Come on, really? That’s a classic conservative gaslighting tactic that allows people to not make it about DEI.”
Before Valbrun Consulting Group stepped down, District 86’s efforts to hire an equity consultant encountered a previous setback that also had something to do with an anti-conservative social media post causing concerns within the community.
“You have to find consultants that are going to bring the community together,” said Mayer, who is Mexican American. “And the reality is that we live in a pretty solid Republican area, and so to even consider hiring somebody who has gone on social media and basically attacked the entire Republican Party — it just shows a lack of judgment by the superintendent. That she doesn’t understand the community that she would like to bring DEI into.”
Mayer added that Prentiss has not only struck out twice in finding a consultant to do “important DEI work,” but has also made “generalized, derogatory statements” about the Hinsdale community to the media.
“I really hope she’s looking for another job at this point, it would probably be in her best interest to do so. There are probably districts out there who would think that someone progressive like her — if that’s what you want to call her — would be a great addition to their district but for this community right now, this moment in time, I think she’s just done too much damage and created too much chaos and unfortunately she’s lost the support of a lot of people.”
Community members who signed the petition, including Linda Burke, who has been a vocal supporter of a mask mandate in schools, said the petition is not about a “single issue.”
“[Prentiss] has been correct and courageous on COVID mitigations. I deplore the hatred directed at her on this. However, I decided to sign, first, because she should not have called out the entire district — she did not merely call out racist behavior where it occurred, which I would strongly support. Also, I signed on the basis of academic policy,” Burke said.
In Nov. 2020, the board unanimously voted to extend Prentiss’ contract — which began in 2019 — by three years. In 2021, Prentiss earned an Award of Merit in the Administrator category as part of the 2021 Distinguished Service Awards program sponsored by the Illinois Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association (INSPRA).
District 86 declined to comment at the time of publication.