Chicago Public Schools’ CEO Janice Jackson said Tuesday she will not wait for a review of the district’s policies and procedures before making changes directed at student safety.
Former assistant U.S. Attorney Maggie Hickey will conduct independent comprehensive review of the policies and procedures in the district, she said. The decision comes in the wake of a Chicago Tribune investigation that found hundreds of cases where CPS employees were responsible for the sexual abuse of students.
"This is about protecting children," she said. "I have said clearly that the accountability starts with me. My mamma bear instincts are out front on this."
But already, the controversy over reports that hundreds of CPS students were sexually abused by district employees over the past decade is spilling over into the mayor’s race.
Candidate Lori Lightfoot pointed the finger at Rahm Emanuel.
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"Despite red flag after red flag, these were not isolated incidents, but were the product of widespread systematic failures," Lightfoot said. "Rahm Emanuel and the CPS leadership failed to take action."
Former Chicago police Supt. Garry McCarthy also took aim at his former boss saying, “the sexual assaults of our children in and around our schools, which ought to be the very places where our children should be the most protected, is despicable and unforgivable. The only thing we hear from the current mayor are apologies.”
On Sunday, the mayor vowed to fix the problems allegedly caused by ineffective background checks and educators with criminal convictions.
"It took a lot of courage for those students to speak up," Emanuel said. "Therefore we owe them the same amount of courage to fix the problem once and for all."
One way to do that, CPS says, is changing the laws about school districts sharing personnel information.
"Having the ability to alert other school districts of past performance or the reason why an individual has been terminated from the district," Jackson said. "Right now state law precludes us from doing that."
