Board of Education members unanimously voted to approve a total of nearly $1.3 million to settle two former Lincoln Park High School basketball coaches’ federal defamation suits Friday. But fallout from the 2020 scandal in which CPS abruptly fired two coaches and two principals and removed other staff members, remains ongoing.
In agreeing to pay former head coach of the girls varsity basketball team Larry Washington $775,000, and former boys varsity basketball head coach Patrice Gordon $495,000, CPS will close the civil complaints that each of the coaches filed in 2021, claiming the denial of due process and infliction of emotional distress in addition to defamation.
CPS also agreed to separately pay Gordon $95,000 in July, to settle a grievance that the Service Employees International Union filed on his behalf, in his other former CPS role as a security guard.
Washington told the Tribune that he aims to continue seeking an apology or retraction that he was awarded in a separate grievance process, by an independent arbitrator who found that CPS publicly associated the terminated staffers with vague accusations involving sex and retaliation. The district then sent an “overtly false and/or misleading” message to the school community after the Office of Inspector General found Washington’s actions were “not sexually motivated, nor retaliatory,” according to the arbitrator’s ruling.
At the board meeting Friday, the President of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, Troy LaRaviere, said that recent revelations regarding CPS’ response to since-unsubstantiated complaints of misconduct at Lincoln Park in 2020 have ongoing implications.
According to an Office of Inspector General’s investigation that concluded in June, a high-ranking former CPS official with an “obvious” conflict of interest as a Lincoln Park basketball parent, violated “myriad” policies in conducting a secret investigation involving the girls team that “tainted” a separate, “significantly flawed” investigation of the boys team.
The CPS watchdog agency’s probe of former Office of Student Protections Chief Camie Pratt states that she abused her position, lied about recusing herself from matters involving Lincoln Park and withheld information from the inspector general’s office. “Uninvestigated and unproven” allegations by Pratt informed the principals’ terminations, according to the OIG’s report.
A rebuttal that Pratt’s lawyer submitted to CPS for inclusion in her personnel file asserts that she could not have violated “an unwritten conflicts of interest policy”. The rebuttal accuses the OIG of making “baseless” claims, failing to hire outside counsel, failing to interview “key” witnesses, and failing to distinguish between Pratt’s actions as a private citizen and public official. “Pratt is not a liar,” her lawyer Laura Feldman wrote.
Speaking to the new board members Friday, LaRaviere said that principals are key to implementing the board’s initiatives, but many lack trust in CPS. “Principals can take your policies and directives and turn them into real positive changes for students.”
But, LaRaviere added, “Those same school leaders are in fear of unfair or illegal investigations without due process like the abusive investigation conducted against the principal and assistant principal at Lincoln Park High School.” He claimed that recent terminations of principals at multiple schools had similar flaws.
CPS did not immediately provide comment.
