By Inside Publications
The Chicago Board of Education has agreed to pay $700,000 to John Thuet and Michelle Brumfield – the two former Lincoln Park High School [LPHS] principals abruptly fired in 2020 – closing their cases that lasted more than five years. This came after an ugly period at the North Side high school after claims of “adult on student sexual misconduct” shook the school community.
The cases caused turmoil at LPHS with students and parents staging walkouts and protests. The incident cost Thuet and Brumfield their jobs and reputations and revealed a flawed response by CPS to sexual misconduct claims from Jan. 2020. At that time, CPS suspended Pat Gordon (the boys basketball coach), Donovan Robinson (assistant basketball coach), Larry Washington (girls basketball coach), John Johnson (dean), and fired Thuet and Brumfield.
Thuet and Brumfield were fired – without notice, warning, or investigation – for what turned out to be unsubstantiated “sexual misconduct” claims made by a top CPS administrator, claims the Office of Inspector General [OIG] later found to be false, retaliatory, and “troubling.”
On Feb. 3, 2020, CPS hosted a public meeting at LPHS to discuss the principals’ terminations and the others’ suspensions. At the meeting, CPS posted and used slides put together by Camie Pratt, the head of the Office of Student Protection [OSP], which stated there were claims of “adult on student sexual misconduct.”
But as the OIG report would later detail, there was only ever one claim of “adult on student sexual misconduct.” That complaint was actually made by Pratt against Washington, who at the time coached Pratt’s daughter on the LPHS girls’ team. Pratt alleged that a stray text Washington exchanged with Pratt’s daughter about basketball practice somehow constituted “sexual misconduct.”
At the community meeting, Deborah Spraggins, the chief investigator of OSP, who reported to Pratt, told the audience there were also allegations of “adult on student sexual misconduct.”
But in so doing, she riled up the assembled crowd.
Spraggins neither identified against whom the allegation was made nor that the claimed “sexual misconduct” related to a stray text message. She also did not reveal that the complainant was her boss, Pratt, the head of OSP.
OIG would later chastise Pratt and Spraggins in its report, calling them liars and detailing how they conducted a “secret off-the-books investigation” related to Pratt’s complaints involving her own daughter.
Earlier this year, Chicago law firm Ginsberg Jacobs LLC, led by Bill Choslovsky, successfully petitioned for Thuet and Brumfield to be removed from CPS’ “Do Not Hire” list, which departing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez granted. And last week, the CPS Board approved $350,000 payouts to each of them.
It is perhaps a bittersweet end to a long and painful saga for Thuet and Brumfield, who were abruptly fired without even being told what they had done wrong.
“The choice for CPS should not be either protecting students or treating their teachers, coaches, and principals with dignity and some due process. It needs to do both. That’s the ultimate lesson of this five-year saga,” said Choslovsky.
Back in 2020, the claimed “scandal” generated citywide publicity as the principals were fired and four coaches and deans suspended. It took five years to uncover the truth, and in the end the only real “scandal” was within CPS’s top administrative suite, as its own Office of Inspector General uncovered in its 90-page bombshell report that in turn led to CPS settling all the cases.
The OIG report stated that “Pratt’s and Spraggins’s conduct in this matter fundamentally undermined OSP’s integrity and fairness and jeopardized public trust in CPS. Moreover, by investigating [her own daughter’s] playing time under the cover of the LPHS boys’ team investigation, Pratt and Spraggins abused their positions.”
In March 2020, Dean John Johnson was reinstated. In May, CPS’s OIG completed its investigation of Washington, fully clearing him of the false allegation of “adult on student sexual misconduct.” In June, Washington and Dean Donovan Robinson were reinstated. In July 2020, CPS fired Coach Gordon. Then in Jan. 2021, Johnson, Washington, Gordon, and Robinson filed suit against CPS.
In March 2023, an independent arbitrator issued a 66-page opinion admonishing CPS, saying “As an opening observation, the undersigned notes that CPS’s entire course of conduct in this case . . . was rather astounding.”
The independent arbitrator determined that the community notices CPS issued at the time were “overtly false.”
In Aug. 2023, CPS settled its cases with Dean Donovan Robinson and Dean John Johnson for $1 million and also issued written statements to each.
Then on June 28, 2024, the OIG issued a 90-page report chastising CPS for its mishandling of all matters at LPHS, including the terminations of Thuet and Brumfield, which it called “very alarming,” noting that some of its written findings included that “OSP’s off-the-books investigation regarding allegations pertaining to CPS and the girls’ team influenced the terminations of Thuet and Brumfield. Those terminations have been understood to be related to OSP’s misconduct investigation involving the boys’ team. . . [that] Brumfield was fired (along with Thuet) before the SAU could interview her.”
When the OIG eventually interviewed Thuet and Brumfield for this investigation, they each told the OIG that they never received any explanation for their termination.
At a Feb. 2020 meeting with the LPHS School Council, when tensions were boiling, “OSP bootstrapped the justification of Thuet and Brumfield’s terminations on supposedly ‘fully substantiated’ misconduct related to CPS’s allegations. The OIG’s investigations of these allegations weren’t even close to being completed.”
Last January, Thuet and Brumfield filed a petition seeking removal from the DNH list. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez granted their petition, removing them from the DNH list in May. Then last week, the CPS Board agreed to pay Thuet and Brumfield $700,000.
