Fri Dec 14, 2007 at 4:07 PMBy: joe Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing CPS has done this to a lot of people but they usually get away with it because most people do not have the time, energy, or money for the long drawn out fight! GOOD LUCK! I for one hope that CPS is exposed for all their dirty tricks in firing innocent hard working people!

Sat Dec 15, 2007 at 11:10 PMBy: sick of pure Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing I'm sure there's a lot more going on here than the rhetoric PURE espouses and I'm sure the truth will out.

Sun Dec 16, 2007 at 10:06 PMBy: Elwood P. Dowd Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing The EEOC found in favor of a discharged Lincoln Park teacher against Bessie Karvelas on the pregnancy discrimination charge and retaliation. It only took 2 1/2 years to make that decision. The teacher is filing a lawsuit this week against her and CPS in federal court.

Sun Dec 16, 2007 at 10:26 PMBy: wbbm report Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing here are some more details from wbbm about the circumstances surrounding the lawsuit

click here

Mon Dec 17, 2007 at 6:42 PMBy: Monica Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Cathy Lawton, Principal at Barbara Vick, fired a teacher last year right after learning of her pregnancy, saying it was for pedogogical differences. Pleeeaaase!

Thu Dec 20, 2007 at 5:09 PMBy: Larry Michaelson Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing I know tons of teachers who are pregnant, have their babies, and then return to work. There is a LOT here that is not being told. No good teacher on tenure can lose their job for simply being pregnant. I bet this teacher was low on the seniority pole and and is using her pregnancy as an excuse to get money. It's the times we live in -- imaginary discrimination based on color, religion, pregnancy, sexual orientation, ect. I think that PURE is being taken for a real ride here, but of course, they'll never admit it. If this teacher was decent, she certainly could have interviewed with another principal.

Thu Dec 20, 2007 at 8:07 PMBy: also sick of PURE! Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Leave it to PURE to get involved in something like this. They themselves have been pains in the --- for years and years. The "teacher" is using PURE because there probably isn't a decent attorney who'd touch this with a ten foot pole. If this lady was a competent teacher, she'd have long since found a new school and a new life, which is what she needs to do. Anyone who goes to PURE for anything has got to have rocks in their head to begin with.
This woman needs to get a life and move on.

Fri Dec 21, 2007 at 1:41 AMBy: Kugler -- Trolling Trolling Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged!

Fri Dec 21, 2007 at 6:36 PMBy: Jillian Zachas Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing The principal of the school is a very fine young woman with small children of her own. She would never fire a teacher for being pregnant.
I'm guessing that the teacher in question is trying to get money out of the Board since her termination happened at the time of her pregnancy. She's probably staying home raising her baby, hoping to get a windfall. Throw PURE's people into it and you've got a perfect formula ---- for disaster. Why would any level-headed person to to PURE in the first place?????

Sat Dec 22, 2007 at 9:16 AMBy: Trollism Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Bringing forth ideas that are anti-normal thinking.

hs

Sat Dec 22, 2007 at 7:59 PMBy: PURE BS? Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Pure Believer,
Because your principal said that does not mean that the principal at Sauganash fired someone for being pregnant. Since the principal at Sauganash had children during her time as principal, that would be pretty hypocritical, don't you think? I don't believe it happened that way.

Sun Dec 23, 2007 at 4:17 AMBy: fed up with the B.S. Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing I teach at the school and I can tell you no teacher at Sauganash has EVER been terminated because of a pregnancy. We've had several teachers take maternity leaves and have always returned to work. The principal, being a young mother herself, would NEVER, NEVER do anything like this. There are other reasons and this teacher should be ashamed of herself. The truth will out. It always does. Besides, what person in their right mind would want to remain where they weren't wanted? Where's her pride? But I guess that when one is after money, even ill-gotten, they have no conscience.l

Sun Dec 23, 2007 at 7:28 AMBy: the truth is...... Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing Mr. Schmidt is, in this instance, correct. Sauganash has needed a building addition for years, and the need has become acute. My children attend the school, and it's one of the twenty best schools in the city, which is a credit to the principal, who has worked very hard. This charge by the teacher being fired for being pregnant is nonsense and is a waste of time. As Mr. Schmidt says, Sauganash has been given a run-around over a building addition for years. That Sauganash has accomplished it's wonderful academic standing is a credit to it's principal and a very hard working staff. My children look upon it as a second home, and parents work very hard as well. As far as this "suit" is concerned, I know for a fact that the charge is unfounded and untrue. More importantly, we need a building addition desperately. Are you listening, Mr. Duncan?
Or are you of the feeling that the principal and teachers can "manage the best they can"? If this is how you feel, then shame on you!

Wed Dec 26, 2007 at 12:00 PMBy: PUCE Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing The person who mentioned pure as PUCE--you go it! NOTHING BUT TAKING CARE OF THEMSELVES AND CAUSING CHAOS--THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AT IT. pure got a Gates' grant--little does he know. Someone ought to tell him.

Fri Dec 28, 2007 at 7:00 PMBy: When you have problems Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing do not cry when you need help form some administrator.

Fri Dec 28, 2007 at 8:33 PMBy: NO more Uno Schools, Please!! Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing I agree, UNO is a huge pile of crap!!!

Mon Dec 31, 2007 at 7:03 AMBy: Rod Estvan Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing This type of lawsuite in a school system as large as Chicago's is not uncommon. If one reads the legal settlements that CPS enters into with teachers who have been disciplined or removed in the Board reports each month one gets a better understanding of how often this happens.

One problem that principals are faced with is that they are in reality the front line of the school system in applying labor law to teachers and other staff. The administrative law class that is required for the IL admin certificate covers so many areas that it is in many ways useless. As in any organization the Board has a tendency to back up the administrative decisons of principals and look at the factual details only after a lawsuite has been filed.

As this blog has documented principals also have great difficulty correctly applying special education law and the school code as it relates to Local School councils. My own experience is that principals are selected for their educational leadership skills and not for their knowledge of the mulitple laws that effect public schools. A wise principal will be able to avoid legal pitfalls, but an agressive principal attempting to establish his or her authority will often make major legal errors.

So to be honest I do not understand why some of the posters were so upset by the lawsuite or the fact that PURE was involved in it. Even if the lawsuite is found not to have merit by the Court, clearly it does put school level administrators on notice that they must operate within the context of our legal structure.

As for those teachers who have commented on the fact that the teacher bringing this action against the CPS will in the end suffer because she will not be hired again, I have to say there is great truth in those comments. As George knows only too well there is indeed such a thing as a blacklist. This list of trouble making teachers is not limited to CPS, it can extend into the suburbs. I have seen special education teachers who have had major administrative conflicts have trouble being hired outside of Chicago even through there is a major special ed teachers shortage.

Rod Estvan

Mon Dec 31, 2007 at 9:18 AMBy: George N. Schmidt Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing "...As for those teachers who have commented on the fact that the teacher bringing this action against the CPS will in the end suffer because she will not be hired again, I have to say there is great truth in those comments. As George knows only too well there is indeed such a thing as a blacklist. This list of trouble making teachers is not limited to CPS, it can extend into the suburbs. I have seen special education teachers who have had major administrative conflicts have trouble being hired outside of Chicago even through there is a major special ed teachers shortage..." Rod earlier this morning.

Just to update that.

Despite the fact that I am a whistle blower, CPS has kept my on their DO NOT HIRE list for nine years now (February 1, 2008 will be precisely the 9th anniversary of when I was ordered to Camp Beverly from Bowen High School in Chicago, where I had been teaching English).

Despite the fact that CPS voted to stop using the CASE tests less than two years after I blew the whistle on the CASE tests as a piece of nonsense and a waste of money, the DO NOT HIRE LIST wasn't removed, even after my lawyer and I met with Patrick Rocks and an assistant on that very topic. As a result of that and other experiences (not the least of which is the waste of money for lawyers on Corey H) my conclusion has been that the Law Department at CPS should be considered the ANTILAW Department, since their main jobs (under Rocks, as under his predecessors Ruth Moscovitch and Marilyn Johnson) in the Daley Years is to make sure that both the letter and spirit of the law is violated when the power of the mayor and his minions are questions. Rocks doesn't even try to hide his smirk at Board meetings when people with reasonable complaints talk about suing the Board, because he knows the Board's strategy is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money to cynically stall any litigation -- no matter how meritorious, as in Corey H -- on behalf of his masters at Clark St. and City Hall.

Chicago's DO NOT HIRE list is honored in the suburbs. Once again this year, I've been looking for suburban teaching jobs, and even made a move to try and find them as a substitute teacher. In a couple of cases, things looked promising. Suddenly, the wall of silence descends over all conversation, and you get that sad look from people who know they are doing something craven, but have been ordered to do it and have no choice.

Yes, as the New Year dawns, Chicago's ignoble reality leers across the USA. I'm told that Paul Vallas recently hired Linda P and Johnetta J as expensive bureaucrats for his New Orleans operation, while hundreds of teachers there are still out of work, having seen Hurricane Katrina and the implementation of the "Shock Doctrine" ruin their lives and professional careers, thanks to the Bush and Daley people.

For reasons that will become clear this year, however, I'm more optimistic than recently. Daley is being called the buffoon that he's always been (most recently in yesterday's Sun-Times) and even the corporate Chicago media can sustain the coverups of the crimes of the Daley administration (remember "school reform" was only part of the three-part attack on poor, mostly black children, with "housing reform" and "welfare reform" causing damage as great as "Renaissance 2010" to thousands).

So Happy 2008, y'all.

Despite all the (typical, by the way, anonymous) ranting here against a teacher who exercised her legal rights (after having been denied them at Sauganash), the litigation moves forward. Other teachers have begun winning age discrimination cases against those schooled in Chicago's ugly schools of "data driven" principalship -- and those "above" them in chain of command. There has even been some poetic justice, as people who spent a lifetime kissing up to POWER (mostly, Daley and his minions) didn't live long enough to collect the pensions they claimed they had to lie cheat and steal to get to.

And now, in the spirit of "First they came for...", the majority of principals are facing Comstat at the hands of a guy named Bryan Samuels, who is less qualified to be a tyrant here at Chicago's schools than, bless us, Arne Duncan or Josh Edelman. There is kind of poetic justice in principals who bullied teachers facing crazed data bullying at the hands of incompetents whose pay runs into six figures, but such is life.

Tue Jan 1, 2008 at 11:04 AMBy: George N. Schmidt Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing "Is this the place where they put teachers who have been banished from schools and still have to pay them?..."

Yes. It was located on the upper floors of 125 S. Clark St. for a time. Now it's been dispersed, gulag like, into the area offices.

Fri Apr 4, 2008 at 10:09 PMBy: Buffalo Chip Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing go for it sully!

Fri Apr 4, 2008 at 10:13 PMBy: Click once Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing When sending, calm down and click one time.

Wed May 21, 2008 at 10:21 AMBy: Click once Lawsuit Filed Against CPS For Pregnancy Firing When sending, calm down and click one time.