A special education at Oak Park and River Forest High School who left her job and classroom with just two weeks left in the school year said in a public comment at a School Board meeting that she was forced to resign. Kiah Brown, who had taught at OPRF since 2019, addressed the OPRF District 200 school board at its May 22 meeting just six days after she abruptly left her job.
In her approximately four minute statement at the meeting, Brown said she was forced to resign and that she believed her resignation constituted a “constructive discharge,” a legal term meaning that conditions are so bad at a job that an employee has no alternative but to resign and is essentially fired. Brown told the board her experience at OPRF fell far short of the school’s professed values of equity, inclusion and academic excellence.
“Unfortunately what I experienced and what I witnessed undermined those values,” a tearful Brown said at the meeting. “Across departments and especially within the special education department, I observed inequitable treatment of students and staff and lack of support which led to the increase in turnover particularly among African American employees since the most recent change in administration. They reflect a pattern fueled by poor leadership practices, misrepresentation and the protection of internal leadership alliances over equity and accountability.”
On May 16 Brown sent an email to her students and their parents or guardians announcing that she was leaving OPRF before the end of the school year.
“I’ve come to the point where the moral challenges I face within OPRFHS’s system are no longer something I can ignore without compromising my own health and well-being,” Brown wrote. “As much as I love the students I serve, I’ve realized that love cannot come at the cost of my own peace and professional integrity.”
Brown also accused unnamed OPRF administrators of fostering a hostile work environment and inflicting psychological and professional harm on her.
“What I’ve endured is not isolated; it’s part of a collective pattern of targeted attacks carried out by what I would describe as individuals operating like 13th graders,” Brown said.
Brown, a math teacher, urged the board to look into what has been going on at OPRF and “stop allowing image to outweigh impact.”
“You cannot continue to market equity by indirectly supporting those who perpetuate the antithesis and inadvertently punishing those who advocate for it,” she said.
According to her LinkedIn page, Brown has just been hired as a case manager at Whitney Young High School in Chicago.
Soon after finding out that Brown had sent her email to parents and students, assistant director of Special Education Lesley Roberts sent a note to parents of the students in Brown’s classes.
“Please be advised that Ms. Brown resigned for personal reasons,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts told them a full time substitute who is a licensed learning behavior specialist at OPRF would take over Brown’s assignments for the last two weeks of the school year.
“We would like to assure you that we have taken the necessary steps to ensure continuity of instruction for your student,” Roberts wrote.
The School Board met in closed session at the meeting for 45 minutes with the district’s human resources director Roxana Sanders and director of Special Education Andrea Neuman. After the meeting Sanders, Neuman and Superintendent Greg Johnson all declined to comment when asked about their reaction to Brown’s public comment. New School Board president Audrey Williams-Lee had a short answer when asked about her reaction to Brown’s comments.
“Everyone has the right to express their opinion and share their perspective,” Williams said. “That’s what our country is all about.”
In April, Seneca Johnson, a Student Resource Center monitor at OPRF who has been on leave for the entire school year after filing a complaint with the federal Equal Opportunity Commission accusing administrators of discrimination, told the School Board that many top administrators, some of whom are Black, had discriminated against Black employees at the school.
“I want to speak on the disturbing reality of systematic injustice at Oak Park and River Forest High School,” Johnson said in a public comment at the April 10 school board meeting. “For far too long the school has tolerated discrimination based on disability, age, sex and race, workplace retaliation, creating a hostile work environment that had disproportionately affected Black women and men.”
The morning after the School Board meeting an OPRF spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment about specific cases.
“We take them seriously and we do look into them,” said Karin Sullivan, the school’s executive director of communications. “It’s a HR process and we follow our policies and procedures when it comes to investigations.”
Two School Board members said that they want the school to look into what has been going on.
“It’s obviously very concerning, it is something that needs to be looked into,” said Fred Arkin, the board’s senior member.
Arkin said that it was very unusual that a teacher would quit with just two weeks left in the school year and not finish the semester. Arkin was asked if he thought there was a problem with the workplace culture at OPRF.
“I think that has to be investigated,” Arkin said. “Do I think there is a problem? I don’t think there is a problem but I think we do need to dig into it and learn more about what’s going on to determine if there is a problem.”
But at a school with around 500 employees, “It’s difficult to make everybody 100% happy,” Arkin said.
“Obviously the two statements that we had from the two employees were very passionate, very emotional, but if there is something underlying that’s a problem we’ve got to look at it,” Arkin said.
New board member Josh Gertz said he has “expressed concern toward the administration.”
“It’s certainly something I intend to follow up on with the administration,” Gertz said. “The other thing I would say is that it did seem that they had already begun a process of looking into the allegations and doing their due diligence which was welcomed, it was good to hear.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
