Urbana Former Superintendent Lawsuit

The public may finally get to learn more about the leadership shakeup in Urbana School District 116 this past year. In a new lawsuit by former superintendent Don Owen, the accusations fly about a coordinated effort to stop staff diversification, and in turn address the racial disparities in the school district's treatment and punishment of students. WCIA and WAND have had a couple blurbs so far here and here, respectively, including a link to the legal complaint from WCIA here. The News-Gazette had the most fulsome overview earlier this weekend here. Excerpts:

In a lawsuit filed this week in Champaign County Circuit Court, former District 116 Superintendent Don Owen, 53, alleges that the district and the board of education retaliated against him by firing him for questioning an audit ordered by the board a year ago of the hiring of several minority faculty and staff members.

Besides his job, Owen wants punitive damages against board members John Dimit, Anne Hall, Ruth Ann Fisher, Brenda Carter, Paul Poulosky and Peggy Patten, and former board member Benita Rollins-Gay...

Those hirings sparked complaints from district staff and union members that Owen and his colleagues were engaging in “top-down management” and violating hiring policies. The union maintained it was not opposed to restorative justice but rather its failure to address the needs of all students.

Without consulting Owen, the school board then ordered a “hiring practices audit” of the new staffers, who were all African-American, Latino and Asian...

The suit alleges that the board violated Owen’s civil rights and the Illinois Human Rights Act by retaliating against him for opposing what he believed to be an unlawful employment practice, namely discrimination.

A lot more additional information and timeline available at the full article here. The legal complaint PDF is available here from WCIA. I have a couple links to previous Cheat Sheet posts with additional background on some of the Urbana School issues, including the superintendent changes, here:

• Urbana High School Violence: Overview of various issues, including the superintendent firing.
• Urbana Property Tax and Superintendent Updates: Previous post with updates on new hires in the superintendent's office.
• More previous Cheat Sheet posts mentioning Owen covering quite a bit of the recent timeline.