CPS puts up vigorous court fight over disabled student's sexual assault claim

Education This Week is our weekly recap of the biggest news in education affecting the Chicago area, Illinois, the region and the nation. Today’s edition was written by Nader Issa, the Sun-Times’ education beat reporter. Follow him on Twitter here.

Good morning,

Chicago Public Schools has been heavily scrutinized over the past four years for its widespread mishandling of sexual abuse complaints, perhaps more than any other failure.

The Tribune’s 2018 “Betrayed” series uncovered system-wide predatory behavior in Chicago schools, and officials from ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to former schools chief Janice Jackson vowed to better protect kids. As the feds investigated, CPS created a new office of student protections, moved investigations of adult-on-student abuse to its inspector general’s office and instituted new training for staff — none of those meant to be same-day fixes, rather signs they were beginning to move in the right direction.

Then it was revealed this past fall that there were lapses in a review of sex abuse allegations at a Logan Square school that led to a principal’s promotion while she was under investigation for failing to report complaints. And this week, we published a story about another case: A special education student reported his sexual assault in 2016 in a Southwest Side school’s bathroom (first detailed in “Betrayed”) and CPS is still in court fighting his claim six years later.

The district hired private counsel to work with an in-house attorney to defend against the complaint. In court filings the lawyers call the student’s testimony “self-serving” and cast doubts as to whether an assault even occurred. They’ve questioned the boy about whether the alleged attack was consensual and if anyone has told him it’s bad to be gay. Meanwhile the student’s parents say they never once were offered any type of support by CPS, even before they sued. Needless to say, they’re upset and demoralized that this process has dragged on.

“They dropped the ball,” the boy’s mother told me this week. “And now they’re trying to blame him because they can’t just acknowledge that they did this, and this happened under their watch.”

CPS makes legal arguments in court denying liability. But it won’t answer questions about the case — the district never comments on pending litigation. I asked more general questions, though, such as how the district determines which alleged victims to fight in court and whether it’s appropriate to put up those fights if they publicly say they’re supporting their students. They didn’t answer that, either.

Keep an eye out for updates in this lawsuit this month. A hearing Tuesday was postponed until today, where the judge will hear arguments for CPS’ motion for summary judgment. If the judge denies the district’s request to rule in its favor, a trial is set for Feb. 17. We’ll keep you posted on any big developments.

And in the meantime, we have all the latest on districts scrambling after a downstate judge’s ruling in a mask mandate case, plus a look at outgoing Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey’s legacy and a debunked claim by Mayor Lori Lightfoot about Chicago students and carjackings.

Until next week,

Nader Issa, Sun-Times education reporter

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