LAKE FOREST, IL — A food service worker at Lake Forest High School was removed from campus last week after passing a note with a phone number on it to a student, administrators said.
Superintendent Matt Montgomery said the inappropriate conduct was reported on Feb. 21. After a student tipped off administrators, they removed the employee from food services, reviewed security footage to confirm the accusation and launched an investigation, Montgomery said Friday.
“Within an hour, the food service employee was removed from LFHS property,” Montgomery said.
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District officials also filed a complaint about the employees conduct with their employment agency and contacted the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to file a formal complaint, according to the District 115 superintendent.
“We are working with the employment agency to ensure the expectations of staff conduct and student interactions are reviewed at regular intervals following initial orientation to ensure ongoing compliance with our standards,” he said. “Any incident, such as what was reported, will not be tolerated.”
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The food service worker’s misconduct was first disclosed Saturday by the group Parents Care. Citing a concerned parent and a whistleblower at the high school, the public school-focused website reported that an adult food service worker was fired for soliciting a relationship with a minor.
Montgomery described Parents Care as an “opposition group” that had been making large and “increasingly hostile” requests for information containing “unfounded allegations.”
The superintendent shared a letter from Jennifer Smith, an attorney for the school from the firm Franczek, notifying Jefrey Brincat, Frank McCormick and Philippe Melin, of Parents Care, that the district would only respond to requests for information from their group, its members, family members or affiliates through the formal process under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.
“These requests have come from multiple members of your organization, as well as family members, and have been directed to multiple administrators and board members within the School Districts,” Smith said. “We wish to be clear that the School District values transparency and accountability, and that District personnel have attempted to meet your requests with a spirit of collaboration and as an opportunity for educating those invested in community public schools.”
But the district now feels the need to establish boundaries, its attorney said, and that means treating every inquiry from the group as a FOIA request, without limiting its members access to records of their own children.
Parents Care representatives issued a statement Friday in response to Montgomery’s message.
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“Thank you for finally coming clean to the community. We understand that these are difficult topics and recognize how uncomfortable it can be to have to disclose these types of incidents to the community,” they said. “To be sure, you did face pressure from the Parents Care community to step up and be transparent, and we are proud of you for eventually doing the right thing.”
Frank McCormick, the executive director of Parents Care, said his group had been informed that the district was threatening whistleblowers as part of a crackdown on those who speak to the public. McCormick, a former Waukegan Public Schools employee, said his group planned to issue a full report in the coming weeks.
This month’s incident involving the temporary food service worker came less than three months after Deer Path Middle School teacher Paul Brock was fired over allegations he lied about sexual misconduct accusations from a prior job at Evanston/Skokie School District 65.
As Patch reported, District 65 representatives have no records of ever contacting any other districts about its 2009 grooming investigation into Brock, which they have declined to release to the public.
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