Strong show of support for former Plum Grove principal at Dist. 15 board meeting
About 40 people showed up at Wednesday's Palatine Township Elementary School District 15 meeting to support Kerry Wilson, who was removed as principal from Plum Grove Junior High School last month.
Speakers during the public comment period urged reinstating Wilson, who had been principal at the Rolling Meadows school since 2008.
"The confusion and chaos this has caused students and faculty is beyond real," Plum Grove parent Katy Pietrini told the board. She quoted a text from her son that said, "The school is going downhill," adding, "(Dr. Wilson) is the one thing that kept our school together. And now it's gone. It's a total circus. Fights are happening everywhere."
Meanwhile, the Illinois Attorney General's office has received a request for review of a possible violation of the Open Meetings Act by the school board in removing Wilson "outside of a properly-noticed open meeting" from her position on or around April 21 after it had determined she was to be transferred to the position of assistant director of human resources on July 1. In a communication from Joshua M. Jones, deputy bureau chief of the office's Public Access Bureau, to school board President Lisa Beth Szczupaj, he said, "We have determined that further action is warranted."
Szczupaj issued a statement at Wednesday's meeting explaining how Wilson was moved to a new position as assistant director of human resources at the District's Educational Service Center. She is currently on leave from her new position.
The position switch, Szczupaj said, was supposed to occur on July 1, and Frank C. Whiteley Elementary School Principal Faith Rivera was to take over for Wilson. It was a move Wilson had desired, Szczupaj added.
"While the news was bittersweet for both PGJH and Whiteley, this move provided a career opportunity for Dr. Wilson to round out her tenure in District 15 as a member of the District Office, a career step she had expressed interest in taking for many years," Szczupaj said.
The early switch enabled Wilson to transition into the new role while sharing in activities and events to bring the school year to a successful close, she said.
"Unfortunately, Dr. Wilson informed the District of her desire not to participate in any events at Plum Grove," she said.
However, Wilson's attorney, Steven Glink, has said that his client, who has chosen to take leave rather than begin her new position, wants to remain at the school for the remaining three years of her contract and was transferred against her wishes.
"We are being lied to," Michelle Rushing, president of the school's Parent Teacher Student Association, said during the public comment period Wednesday. "We all know Dr. Wilson wants to stay at Plum Grove."
She said the lives of eighth-graders have been "completely disrupted again," adding, "These particular eighth-graders have already been stripped of so much," including missing out on fun activities in sixth grade during COVID.
"You have with only a few weeks left in the year," she said, "pulled their beloved principal without notice, without closure, and in a heinous and embarrassing fashion."