Chicago Public Schools will pay $700,000 to two former Lincoln Park High School administrators who were fired in 2020 over claims that they mishandled sexual misconduct allegations involving the school’s boys basketball team.
The Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to unanimously approve the settlement with the school’s former interim principal, John Thuet, and Assistant Principal Michelle Brumfield, whose February 2020 firings prompted protests by students and parents, and an internal investigation.
Thuet and Brumfield were placed on CPS’ “Do Not Hire” list, but they were removed from that list this year. They will receive $350,000 each under the settlement, which stems from a federal lawsuit they filed shortly after being fired.
In previous interviews with the Sun-Times, Thuet and Brumfield said they still don’t know why they were fired.
“I’d still really like to know the truth,” Brumfield said in May. “I followed the protocol that we were instructed to follow. And so I really would like to have some answers.”
The school district initially said Thuet and Brumfield were dismissed due to “multiple allegations of serious misconduct involving the athletic program.” They were publicly connected to their handling of an alleged unauthorized overnight boys basketball trip during which two students were videotaped in a sexual encounter that was shared without consent.
The sexual misconduct claims were later found to be false.
But a CPS Office of Inspector General report found that their firings were influenced by an inappropriate, off-the-books investigation into a separate incident. Former CPS Chief Title IX Officer Camie Pratt headed that investigation into a text exchange between a student, who is related to Pratt, and the girls basketball coach.
Unsubstantiated findings of the latter investigation were presented as substantiated to a local school council meeting, which was a leading reason Thuet and Brumfield were fired. Also at that time, the boys basketball investigation was not complete, according to the inspector general report.
The inspector general wrote that Pratt should not have investigated the text messages because it was a conflict of interest to investigate a situation involving a relative, plus she did not have jurisdiction to probe claims not involving student-on-student abuse. Pratt resigned last year and the district placed her on its “Do Not Hire” list.
Bill Choslovsky, a lawyer representing Thuet and Brumfield, said in a statement: “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.”
The school had suspended its boys basketball coach, Pat Gordon; assistant boys basketball coach, Donovan Robinson; girls basketball coach, Larry Washington; and dean, John Johnson.
Gordon was fired and the other three were reinstated later that year.
All four of them sued CPS a year later. Robinson and Johnson have settled lawsuits with the district for $1 million, and Gordon and Washington have settled for $1.3 million.