23 minute read
Big Week
D209 superintendent accused of intimidation
Student suspended, teacher red a month a er four teachers of color were threatened with termination
By ANKUR SINGH & MICHAEL ROMAIN
Contributing Reporter & Editor
Teachers, students and some board members are accusing Proviso Township District 209 Supt. James Henderson and his administration of intimidation after a student and teacher critical of Henderson were suspended and terminated, respectively.
The disciplinary actions happened a month after the teacher and student delivered scathing public comments critical of the district administration at a board meeting in November that prompted allegations of racism from some board members.
Ashley Stohl, a student at Proviso West High School in Hillside, was suspended for five days for scribbling with an expo marker on the photos of D209 board members hanging in a school hallway, a charge that Stohl admitted to.
In an interview earlier this month, Stohl said she took the action out of frustration with some board members and their actions in the face of accumulating complaints from students and teachers about learning conditions in the school.
Stohl said some of her classes have up to 50 students in them and she’s been affected by what she and others have described as an exodus of veteran teachers from D209 under Henderson’s tenure. In October, Stohl founded the Facebook group Students for a Better Proviso and spoke up during a Nov 15 board meeting in defense of four teachers of color who were up for termination.
While the board did not terminate the teachers, three of them are currently serving a 20-day unpaid suspension by the district for student protests, an allegation that both the teachers and students – including Stohl – deny. The Proviso Teachers Union has filed for arbitration after their initial appeal to the board was denied.
At the Nov. 15 meeting, Stohl handed board President Della Patterson, Rodney Alexander and Supt. Henderson bags of peanuts, in reference to Supt. Henderson’s tendency to describe those who have been critical of his administration the “peanut gallery.” Patterson called Stohl’s actions racist.
“Did you only give peanuts to Black people?” Patterson asked Stohl, who is white.
“I only have three bags left,” Stohl said.
In an interview shortly after his daughter was suspended for five days, Mark Stohl said while he does not condone her actions, he believes the punishment is excessive and that the process by which Ashley was suspended was inappropriate and possibly illegal.
“Everything up to now has stemmed
from the way the board has been running things,” Mark Stohl said. “Teachers have seen injustices towards students as far as their learning environments and resources, and the teachers have spoken up about getting better resources and environments for the children and have been disciplined for speaking up about that. Now, the children don’t know who to speak up to about it and when they see their teachers are speaking up about it and being disciplined, the children heavily support their teachers. The board is retaliating against teachers and now students.” Mark and Ashley Stohl said they didn’t know that “peanut gallery,” a late 19th century Vaudeville-era term that refers to the cheapest and rowdiest seats in a theater, is also construed as having racial
connotations due to Blacks being confined to that area of the theater.
“She handed [the peanut bags] out to the people on the school board who are the rudest to her personally,” Mark Stohl said. “She handed one to Henderson because he’s the one who initiated the whole ‘peanut gallery’ thing. They’re invoking a double standard. I raised my children right. She doesn’t have a racial bone in her body and to her, she didn’t know this was a racial thing, yet she’s being targeted by the school board president as racist.”
Stohl said that she was suspended on Dec. 11, even though she scribbled on the photo on Nov. 17. Stohl said that during the disciplinary meeting, the district’s HR officer, Scott Hadala, showed up and that she was being questioned without the presence of her father. She said she had to ask administrators to call her father. She said it was the second time she’d been questioned by HR without the school notifying her parents.
“He’s previously interviewed me and a student after we found out he’s not supposed to question students without parental consent or a social worker,” Ashley said, referencing the process by which district administrators were attempting to find out if teachers helped students create posters criticizing Henderson and his administration, allegations that led to the four teachers of color being threatened with termination.
“After that [first] meeting, Scott fabricated an entire story about how we gave him teacher names so those teachers could be put up for termination. None of the teachers were actually behind any of that.”
Mark Stohl said he paid for the poster board and markers, adding that the teachers “were an inspiration not instigators. You would think that smart administrators would love to have teachers respected by students.”
Ashley and Mark Stohl said Henderson himself showed up to the disciplinary hearing that preceded Ashley’s five-day suspension.
“It’s a rarity for [Henderson] to show up at West,” Mark Stohl said. “They initially told us she would be suspended for two to three days. Ashley called me to say she had been called back into the principal’s office and as she was waiting there, Henderson walked into the room where she was going into. As he left, he looked at Ashley and had a smirk on his face. And when I got to the school, we were told she’d be suspended for five days. It was a very strange
JAMES HENDERSON
Paul Goyette/Photographer Members of Students for a Better Proviso hold signs critical of Supt. James Henderson at a Nov. 15 D209 school board meeting at PMSA in Forest Park. Ashley Stohl, one of the group’s founders, is on the far right.
ENVIRONMENT
Sustaining the commission
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established in 1971, it stopped meeting by the end of the decade. In 2019, members of Keep Forest Park Beautiful, a local chapter of Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit that aims to end littering, improve recycling and beautify communities, asked then-mayor Anthony Calderone to create a sustainability commission. The village attorney searched the village code and discovered that the Environmental Control Commission was still on the books. Calderone decided to simply appoint members to the commission that already existed on paper. The village council approved the appointments on April 22, 2019.
The commission included then-Review contributing reporter Lucia Whalen, Karen Rozmus, the former Environment Services Manager in Oak Park who started Forest Park’s recycling program; Etta Worthington, a community organizer with Western Front Invincible; Jessica Rinks, an award-winning farmer who helped start the Forest Park Community Garden; David Gulyas, a LEEDcertified sustainable building and interior design consultant who has since been appointed to the Altenheim Advisory Committee; Forest Park Kiwanis board member William Gerst; and architect Scott Whitebone.
But the COVID-19 pandemic derailed the revival. According to the village website, the Environmental Control Commission last met on Oct. 14, 2020.
The original description of the Environmental Control Commission duties said that it serves “to promote and ensure the cleanliness of water and air; study and make recommendations to the village council on all other matters related to the environment of the community.” The amended ordinance kept the “cleanliness of water and air” language and added that the commission would promote “the protection of the public’s health, safety and welfare as it relates to environmental sustainability” and “the conservation of natural resources and protection of the environment.” It would also help educate Forest Parkers about environmental and natural resources, collect information about how the changes in the environment affect residents’ quality of life, and “make recommendations to the village council for adoption of policies, programs and/or goals which would improve or sustain the environment of the village, and which would not conflict with state or federal laws or regulations.”
The village code didn’t explicitly set the term lengths and stated that the council can appoint “as many members as the village council may deem necessary.” The seven members of the revived commission were appointed to five-year terms. The new ordinance explicitly caps the number at seven and shortens the term length to four years.
The village council reappointed all members except Whalen. The terms will expire on April 23, 2023, when their original five-year terms would have ended.
The commissioners approved both ordinances unanimously and without discussion.
Forest Park’s busy year in religion
Closings, mergers and moving through COVID
By TOM HOLMES
Contributing Reporter
MORE THAN A NAME
On July 1, 2021 Luke and Bernardine got married, so to speak. That is, St. Luke Catholic Church in River Forest and St. Bernardine Catholic Church in Forest Park became united as one parish as part of the consolidating process in the Catholic Archdiocese called Renew My Church.
This summer, the new “couple” chose a hyphenated name, St. Luke and St. Bernardine Parish, even though doing so went against Archdiocesan guidelines. The story of how that happened reveals that the Catholics in Forest Park and River Forest felt empowered to assert their will and that the men at the top of the hierarchy were willing to listen.
FIRST UNITED CLOSES
The members of First United Church of Christ worshipped for the last time in the building at 1000 Elgin which they used to own. It’s the familiar story of mainline churches declining in membership and therefore income, closing, and selling their property to what I will call “entrepreneurial” pastors.
REV. TEAGUE BECOMES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PTMAN
Rev. Bill Teague, the pastor of Hope Tabernacle Church which worships in the white stucco building on Dixon Street, now serves as the Executive Director of Proviso Township Ministerial Alliance Network and one of his parishioners, Dana Williams, is the nonprofit’s business manager.
ONLINE WORSHIP
In 2021 almost no one thought that online worship would become the new normal. Now that COVID restrictions have loosened up, many members have returned to in person worship, but not all of them. Some have become used to “going to church” in their pajamas. Online worship seems to here to stay.
RENEW MY KITCHEN
Renew My Kitchen is more than a fundraiser like so many church cookbooks have been through the years. When St. Bernardine and St. Luke got “married,” the members realized that the two congregations had different personalities and cultures. The cookbook is one of the creative efforts of two different churches in two different communities to make the marriage work.
PASTOR PONGSAK RETIRES
Rev. Dr. Pongsak Limthongviratn retired from both his full-time job as Director of Asian Ministry at the Evangelical Lutheran Church headquarters in Chicago and his role as the part time pastor of St. Paul Thai Lutheran Church for the last 30 years.
JEFF RUSSEL IN SEMINARY
Jeff Russell is the owner of Millionaire Barber Shop on Beloit Avenue, just two doors from the Park entrance on Harrison Street. He has been doing ministry as a lay minister for many years, even leading worship in his barbershop for a time. Last year, he decided that he was being called to full time ministry and is attending classes in the seminary with the goal of becoming an ordained minister. ST. PAUL THAI CHURCH — TRULY MULTI-CULTURAL
While the cultural foundation of St. Paul Thai Lutheran Church is still Thai, the congregation has defied sociological trends by becoming truly multi-cultural. Three of the members of the praise team are Black and the Senior Pastor — who is assisted by a retired white pastor, a Thai lay minister, and a Thai intern -- is white. The whole service is translated into English when the speakers are Thai and into Thai when they are “farang,” i.e. Western. LIVING WORD — TRULY MEGA
I’ll bet that many Forest Park residents don’t even know where Living Word Christian Center meets for worship, but every Sunday thousands of people from all over the Chicago metro area meet for worship in the state-of-the-art sanctuary, located in the south portion of the Forest Park Mall on Roosevelt Road, which the mega-church’s pastor owns. SECULARIZATION
That American culture is becoming increasingly secular isn’t exactly news. Ask members of the First United Church of Christ.
The trend is documented in Forest Park. Of the 33 displays in the front yards on Circle, Elgin and Thomas south of the Eisenhower, 32 had non-religious figures like Santa, reindeer, snowmen and candy canes. Ten had manger scenes but nine of those also had a Santa or a snowman or some non-religious holiday symbol.
SARA JANZ/Photographer Congregant sings during the Legacy Completion of MinistryWorship Service at First United Church of Christ.
2022
Schools and bar behavior
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village sees the results. Forest Park School District 91 closed one elementary school, but it hasn’t ruled out closing another and potentially restructuring which grade levels are in which school further down the line.
Long-time village commissioner Joe Byrnes declined to run for re-election.
Forest Park Public Library Executive Director Pilar Shaker resigned at the end of October, and northwest suburban Barrington Area Library District director Vicki Rakowski, who started her library career in Forest Park, was chosen as replacement. And here at the Review, veteran Growing Community Media freelancer Igor Studenkov was hired as a full-time reporter.
Slow progress toward new developments
The Village of Forest Park and the Park District of Forest Park took a few steps toward major development projects – but it may take another year, if not longer, for it to bear fruit.
After the Altenheim Ad Hoc Advisory Committee was de facto shuttered last year, Commissioners Maria Maxham and Jessica Voogd spearheaded the effort to establish a new Altenheim Advisory Committee to finally figure out what to do with the villageowned portion of the retirement community site. The committee represents a broad cross-section of subject matter experts and stakeholders, including representatives from the Altenheim community and the adjacent Grove condominium development. The committee is still in the process of developing a final vision, but it is currently expected to present their findings to the council by early spring 2023.
Meanwhile, the Park District of Forest Park took several steps toward building a new indoor facility at 7400-7412 Harrison St., across the street from its main park and facilities. While the plans haven’t been finalized, the park district is looking to design a building to house its popular day camps and other programs. West Suburban Special Recreation Association (WSSRA) expressed interest in moving its offices to the new building from their current space at the Franklin Park School District 84 building at 2915 Maple St.
The park district acquired the property last spring and demolished the former Pines Restaurant, Oak Leaf Lounge sand Forest Park Foreign Car Repair shop buildings in late November.
This year also saw another development opportunity emerge further south. The U.S. Army Reserve closed the Forest Park Army Reserve Center in June. Originally, it offered to turn the property over via the Real Property Exchange (RPX) program, where the bidder gets the property in exchange for making improvements to another, active military facility. The village was the only entity to express interest.
During the July 25 village council meeting, Mayor Rory Hoskins asked the council to vote to submit a proposal. At the time, he suggested using the center as a new municipal building that would bring all village services under one roof. But Maxham and Byrnes balked out of concern about costs and the fact that the Pentagon wouldn’t allow the village to inspect the property ahead of time. With Commissioner Ryan Nero unable to attend because of the council’s remote meeting attendance rules, the council deadlocked.
The Army Reserve is still seeking possible developers, but there has been no movement on it since.
Madison Street bars
The perennial issue of rowdy behavior along Madison Street remained in the headlines this year.
The Illinois Liquor Control Commission ruled that last year’s 20-day suspension of Lantern Haus’ liquor license over a fight that broke out outside the bar in late June 2021 was improper. The state regulator found the village failed to prove that Lantern Haus didn’t do everything it could to stop the fight. The bar ended up closing in July, with 99 Haus Balloons, a party balloon supplier operated by owner Patrick Jacknow’s wife, Aubrey Jacknow, taking over the space.
Last year, the Forest Park Tap Room bar got its liquor license revoked, only to have the state overturn the ruling. But when its liquor license came up for renewal in May, Hoskins, who acts as the village’s liquor commissioner, moved to deny the renewal after police Chief Ken Gross argued that its owners, brothers Lance and Hansel Law, couldn’t be trusted after misleading the village about their criminal record and the track record of Berwyn Tap Room, a bar they co-owned.
The ensuing proceedings dragged on for four months, with several meetings getting postponed and one meeting halted after a court reporter took issue with the Review recording the proceedings. Hoskins ultimately ruled against the Tap Room. The village council spent the first half of the year closely scrutinizing entertainment licenses – the licenses every business must have if it plays live music or holds any kind of performance. But by this fall, many of the concerns abated and, on Oct. 24, the commissioners voted to delegate the license approval to the village administrator. The business owners can appeal the license rejections to the village council.
High school strikes and strife
This year saw Proviso Township High School District 209 grapple with a nearly three-week teachers strike, teacher shortages, busing issues, and students protesting over said issues.
The strike began March 4 and lasted until March 28, though, since the last week fell on spring break, families only saw its effect for 19 days. The strike followed months of protracted negotiations between district officials and the Proviso Teachers Union Local 571, with the union pushing for higher salary increases, bonuses for teachers who have been with the district longer and smaller class sizes.
The agreement, which is retroactive to 2021, included 3% annual raises and an annual $500 bonus – less than what the union called for but more than what the district had offered.
Tensions were high during the strike, to the point where Supt. James Henderson and board member Claudia Medina, a vocal critic of the district’s current administration, got into an altercation at the March 15 board meeting. Video recordings show Medina approach Henderson and the two getting into each other’s faces. Security guards separated them.
While PTU called for Henderson to resign, the majority of the board backed him, subsequently approving a contract that included an extra $31,000 annuity and a three-year payout if he was fired for any reason over the next four years.
By that point, Henderson already faced complaints about the lack of administrative responsiveness, poor IT capabilities, security staffing shortfall and staff shortages in general, employee churn, and a general lack of respect shown by Henderson toward teachers and students. But the complaints
intensified at the start of the 2022-2023 school year as students got sent into overcrowded, sometimes unstaffed classrooms and school buses either arriving late or not arriving at all, students taking as much as an hour-and-a-half to get back home. 2022 By October, a group of students called Students For A Better Proviso began protesting poor conditions in their schools and other issues. The district responded by initiYEAR IN REVIEW ating termination proceedings against four teachers of color who they claim helped form the student group. But the vote was never taken. Board President Della Patterson ended the Nov. 15 board meeting during the public comment period after first trying to gavel down a teacher critical of the way the district managed its budgets.
Elementary school closing
Meanwhile, on the elementary school level, Forest Park School District 91 closed Grant-White Intermediate Elementary School at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, sending all third through fifth grade students to Field-Stevenson Intermediate Elementary School.
The plan unveiled in March called for a more ambitious restructuring of the entire school system. All preschool and kindergarten students would attend Garfield Primary Elementary School, while all first to fourth grade students would attend Field-Stevenson and all students in fifth to eight grades would attend Forest Park Middle School. Both Grant-White and Betsy Ross Primary Elementary School would be closed. The plan came in response to declining enrollment in several schools and was described as a way to more efficiently distribute the district’s resources.
The district conducted three public hearings in late March/early April, where parents and teachers expressed concerns about several aspects of the transition – most notably, how the changes would impact students with disabilities. In response, the board decided to hold off on closing Betsy Ross, at least for the 2022-2023 school year.
Since then, the district has been using the Grant-White building to hold board meetings, teacher coaching and other professional development activities. It also used the building to hold English language and citizenship preparation classes for immigrant families that it’s offering through a partnership with Triton College. While many Grant-White families expressed concerns about the transition, the initial response was positive.
D209
Supt. criticized
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coincidence.”
During her public comments at the Nov. 15 board meeting, teacher Jennifer LaBash said that “we’re digging up your skeletons and we’re going to find them … your tax liens and other stuff you’re doing and Jimmie, we’ll find yours.”
“You’re not going to disrespect that Black man!” Patterson interjected, before urging security guards to escort LaBash out of the room. Roughly a month later, she was terminated.
At the Dec. 13 board meeting, where members voted for LaBash’s termination, many students, teachers, and parents accused the district of disciplining LaBash and Stohl out of retaliation for criticizing the district on how it manages its funds and treats teachers.
“We have asked the board and Superintendent Henderson time and again to work with us, through the process in our contract, to settle grievances and handle personnel issues as they arise. Every time, we’re ignored. Our goal is to establish a collaborative relationship with district leadership to solve these issues,” said Proviso Teachers Union President John Wardisiani in a statement. “We will continue to stand up and fight for our students and the educators who serve them.”
During the open comment period nearly all the testimonies from teachers, students, and parents were critical of the district for their response during the November board meeting.
“Although I do not fully condone Ashley’s actions, I do not believe that this small offense would warrant such a large punishment,” said Max Olszta, a student at Proviso West High School and a member of Students for a Better Proviso. “
Olszta also claimed the district’s actions violated Illinois Senate Bill 100, which states that “out-of-school suspensions of longer than three days, expulsions, and disciplinary removals to alternative schools may be used only if other appropriate and available behavioral and disciplinary interventions have been exhausted.”
Olszta, Mark Stohl and Ashley Stohl said that no other interventions were made prior to Stohl being suspended.
Micaela Soto, a teacher at Proviso East High School in Maywood, told the board she loves the district and is very invested in it. She graduated from Proviso East and her own children currently attend school in the district.
“We’re teachers and when it comes to our students, we will defend them vigorously,” Soto told the board. “Ms. Jenny LaBash, I love her. She is amazing and just because you all have a personal vendetta against her, she should not be terminated.”
Soto also accused the district of violating the collective bargaining agreement made with the teacher’s union for not paying several teachers.
“We also have cases of teachers who have gone above and beyond to attempt to fill the gaps in our district. They’ve taken on supervisory roles and covered extra classes, and while our contract outlines a process for compensating teachers for this extra work, District 209 has failed to pay them,” PTU President Wardisiani said in a statement.
Multiple board members criticized the D209 administration for allowing an HR officer to question Stohl.
“We need to be very, very careful that we are not violating SB 100 and giving five-day, out-of-school suspensions for offenses that have not gone through any kind of disciplinary chain,” said board member Amanda Grant. “Any student who is disciplined should be meeting with counselors. I also feel that it is incredibly inappropriate to have the director of HR be interrogating students. This has happened a few times now … that is not what he’s here for. We have counselors, teachers, interventionists and social workers for our students and we need to be utilizing them.”
Grant also noted that the district was applying a double standard by chastising Stohl for playing on the term “peanut gallery” when Henderson has used the term publicly several times to castigate those critical of his administration. She also lambasted the superintendent for what she called his retaliatory attacks on teachers and students.
“It just turns my stomach,” she said. “Dr. Henderson, you need to resign. This is not working. I can’t think of a single good thing that’s happened in the past two years … We were assured you knew how to communicate, work with different groups, support teachers. We see none of that … We are losing teachers. We are hemorrhaging teachers and staff … These are good teachers ... How is this studentcentered, student-focused? It’s not.”
Board member Sam Valtierrez urged students under 18 to call their parents and go to a counselor if they get in trouble. “For the record, Mr. Valtierrez, the parent was present,” Henderson said, referencing Stohl’s second disciplinary hearing. The superintendent, however, did not address Ashley Stohl’s and Mark Stohl’s claims that Mark was not present for the first interrogation earlier this year and that she had to call her father herself for the disciplinary meeting she had in December. The Stohls also questioned why it took nearly a month for administrators to discipline her for defacing property. Stohl said she believes the action was taken a month later so her out-of-school suspension would prohibit her from attending the Dec. 13 board meeting. Henderson regularly declines requests for comment and district officials indicated at the Dec. 13 meeting that they cannot disclose too many details of Stohl’s disciplinary action due to privacy and policy concerns.
At the Dec. 13 meeting, President Patterson said that “with students, we have to be extremely careful if we don’t know all of the facts. I’m not going to [identify the student’s name]. I am aware of what took place. Technically, this could have been worse than what actually took place for a particular student. There are certain activities you cannot participate in. I’m going to leave that there.”
The next board meeting will be held Jan. 10 at Proviso West High School in Hillside.
DELLA PATTERSON SCOTT HADALA AMANDA GRANT RODNEY ALEXANDER
AMANDA GRANT
D209 board member CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com
