The Local School Council at Jones College Preparatory High School is set to vote Tuesday on whether to recommend their principal be fired after a few members of the committee levied accusations of policy violations against the school leader.
The five-hour meeting ran late into Tuesday night after a time of public comment and then a closed session ahead of the scheduled vote.
The controversial vote pushes the LSC’s broken relationship with Principal Joseph Powers into further turmoil and threatens to divide one of Chicago’s highest-rated high schools.
Three LSC parent representatives, including the chair, wrote a letter to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez last month alleging Powers has violated the district’s residency requirement by maintaining a primary home in Missouri, failed to properly handle teacher misconduct complaints and fostered an unwelcoming environment for students and staff of color and transgender and gender non-conforming students.
The trio was taking its disapproval a step further Tuesday, putting the concerns for a vote before the entire 13-member LSC that would call on Martinez to approve administrative charges against Powers and begin dismissal proceedings. Under state law, the CEO would have 45 days to either approve or reject the request.
The agenda for the meeting, which was streamed on the Jones LSC’s YouTube channel, featured more public speakers than usual because of “volume of interest.”
In the days since Powers revealed the tension with the LSC and that he was considering retirement in a stunning letter to the school community, some parents, staff and even student members of the LSC have come to his defense — or at least criticized the process by which the three LSC members aired their concerns.
Sarah Kaiser, whose daughter is a senior at Jones, said she wished there was more parent and student input before the LSC representatives wrote their letter because “so many people in this situation were just completely blindsided by this happening.
“If these allegations are found to be true and there are serious issues, then I hope it’s addressed,” Kaiser said. “I don’t think it was gone about in the way it should have been.”
Kaiser said she has appreciated Powers’ leadership, calling him a “well-loved principal,” and felt he has been transparent and appropriately handled problems at the school. Addressing the complaint that Powers hasn’t welcomed LGBTQ students, Kaiser said her daughter, who is gay, has had a fulfilling experience in the school’s Pride Club and appreciated the school’s attention to students’ pronouns and bathroom signage.
Cassie Creswell, the LSC chair and a frequent critic of CPS officials, had maintained that the concerns are widespread. “The need to remove the principal is about student safety, both accountability for past harm and preventing future harm to students, staff and families,” she said this week.
CPS general counsel Joseph Moriarty told Creswell and the other two LSC members who wrote the letter that the district sees no reason to remove Powers while it investigates the allegations. “At this time, the investigative bodies have not indicated that circumstances exist to justify the removal of Dr. Powers,” he said in his response letter last week.
The public comment section of Tuesday’s meeting was contentious, with spats breaking out over changing time limits for public comment and bylaws of the council’s code.
The three letter-writer’s goal was to effectively resubmit their earlier letter as a more formal request to oust the principal and for CPS to continue an investigation opened on him.
During the meeting, students and teachers brought up concerns about transparency surrounding the LSC.
“I am not suggesting that everything at Jones is perfect,” said Max Stein, the parent of a freshman at the school. “And I know there’s room for improvement on any number of important issues. The issue I have is with the tactics being used by these three members who decided to take these issues outside the Jones community.
“Those tactics … seemed to me to have lost sight of the ways in which Jones is succeeding and how those actions might peril those successes. At the same time. I am worried that the continued use of these tactics by the LSC will further harm the Jones community.”
Some meeting attendees spoke highly of the school.
“If you look at what Dr. Powers has contributed and you go back to the history and realize that Jones wasn’t always the school it was, but it took Dr. Powers and administrative team to put vision to it,” said K.K. Cleland, a parent who has had three children attend Jones, said.
“He was insistent that students be known and feel welcome. And I want to reassure to families who are listening: Hang in there. This LSC too shall pass, and whatever happens tonight, it’s not the end.”
Students at the meeting were more critical of the school administrator.
“I have no personal experience with Dr. Powers, but that’s precisely the problem,” said Maya Smith-Munyi, a sophomore at the school. “He doesn’t feel like a principal the same way that Jones doesn’t feel like a school, so there’s a severe lack of school spirit, school pride, culture participation on the part of the students, as well as Dr. Powers himself.”
During the meeting, current and former students spoke of racial barriers they faced at the school, like a lack of outreach toward parents who didn’t speak English as a native language.
“I think a lot of parents here are wearing rose-colored glasses, and saying, you know, ‘Jones is not perfect, but it’s a great place.’ It’s a great place for who? I really enjoy Jones. I got into college here at Jones. I love this school,” said Daniel Andrade, a student and member of the LSC. “But there are systemic changes that need to be made to uplift lessons of color, which I just don’t see. And student testimonies from today have shown that students of color are not really being supported.”