Two former Lincoln Park High School administrators who were terminated and placed on Chicago Public Schools’ do-not-hire list had their names removed Wednesday after years of fighting for vindication.
Former interim Principal John Thuet and Assistant Principal Michelle Brumfield were fired in 2020 over broad claims of sexual misconduct, which were later found to be unsubstantiated. Three coaches and a dean were also suspended.
While several coaches and the dean were reinstated, Thuet and Brumfield were terminated. And for five years, their names were also on an internal registry of former employees and job applicants barred from working in the district.
“It’s nice that there are some people in the district who have integrity and will look at things objectively and make reasonable decisions,” said Thuet, who was just starting his career as a CPS administrator at the North Side high school when the allegations of misconduct came up. “But nothing can take all of that back.”
The district said in a statement that the process of removing do-not-hire designations allows for CPS to work with “the most updated and relevant information at hand.”
“Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has always been and remains committed to protecting students and employees as part of our mission to provide an equitable, inclusive, and safe learning and work environment,” the CPS statement said.
In early January of this year, staff and community members at Lincoln Park High submitted a petition to CPS Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez to have Thuet and Brumfield taken off the list. Their letter describes the removal of the administrators as “a traumatic experience.” It includes over 150 signatures.
The former administrators’ lawyer, Bill Choslovsky of Ginsberg Jacobs LLC, also submitted an application to CPS to remove the designation. He attached the letter of community support.
In an interview with the Tribune, Choslovsky said that “CPS not just fired (Brumfield and Thuet), but destroyed their reputations and lives.”
“Now that the truth has finally emerged, what it shows is that the only scandal that ever occurred was not at Lincoln Park High School, but within CPS leadership itself,” he said.
The scandal that led to their firing dates back to 2019, with the creation of the district’s new Office of Student Protections and Title IX in the wake of a 2018 Tribune investigation that uncovered CPS’ mishandling of sexual misconduct complaints, the district transferred allegations involving adult-on-student sexual misconduct to the Office of the Inspector General. CPS hired Camie Pratt, whose daughter attended Lincoln Park High School to lead the office to investigate student-on-student complaints and other alleged discrimination, such as on the basis of race or religion.
That year, Pratt’s daughter had just joined the Lincoln Park High School girls’ basketball team. Pratt accused the head coach, Larry Washington, of grooming her daughter, complaining to the OIG that her daughter had been benched as a result.
Pratt alleged that a stray text Washington exchanged with Pratt’s daughter about basketball practice constituted “sexual misconduct.” Pratt then alleged that Brumfield, the assistant principal at the time, mishandled a conversation with her daughter.
But in January 2020, Brumfield was terminated, along with then-principal Thuet, after another sex scandal, this time after a boys’ basketball trip in the winter of 2019, which Pratt’s Office of Student Protections said Thuet mishandled. Neither Thuet nor Brumfield received any explanation for their termination, they said.
“I felt like I had been hit by a truck,” said Brumfield of that time. “I was completely blindsided.” Weeks later Thuet and Brumfield jointly filed suit in federal court against CPS, then CEO Janice Jackson and other district officials, claiming deprivation of due process, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
At the same time, students and parents at Lincoln Park High responded. They held walkouts and protests at the school. The coaches sued CPS a year later and eventually received millions in settlement money. Meanwhile, Thuet and Brumfield were left to slowly rebuild their lives. It was hard on Thuet’s family, the former interim principal reflected.
“My son was just at the age where you start to understand these things,” he said. “It hit him the hardest.”
In late June of last year, an OIG report that came out shattered Pratt’s allegations. It showed that Thuet followed appropriate protocol with the district operations manager over email regarding the boys’ basketball trip. It also showed that the OIG could not investigate the claim against Brumfield because she was fired so abruptly.
“The district partially based both administrators’ terminations on Pratt’s uninvestigated and unproven allegations [relating to her own daughter],” the report states.
Pratt voluntarily left her post a week after the report came out, and her name was placed on the do-not-hire list.
Thuet was watching his son’s conference track meet when he heard that CEO Martinez had taken his name off the list. He tried interviewing for education jobs after the firing, but said he couldn’t find work after everything that happened.
Brumfield had more luck with jobs in the education space, but said that she had to move out to a school in the suburbs to work as an administrator. She wants to reapply for a job with CPS.
“Even though that was a painful experience, I still love being an educator,” she said. “My heart is in education.”