An award-winning Chicago Public Schools teacher who scored the enviable job as principal in what was the most expensive CPS building ever constructed, has resigned under fire.
For the last 2½ years, as principal of Social Justice High School, 40-year-old Rito Martinez has been living a lie, the Sun-Times reported.
It seems Martinez claimed to CPS officials that he was living in Chicago, but shortly after taking the job at the school he helped design, Martinez moved his family to Oak Park, breaking a residency rule put into place by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley.
He hoped to get away with it.
"I knew that to be principal, you needed to live in the city, and I made a personal decision not to live in the city,'' Martinez told the Sun-Times. "I'm heart-broken and very sorry and need to figure out what my next steps are.''
Students and teachers were stunned when Martinez told them Thursday that he had resigned as of the end of the school year.
Referring to "personal decisions" he made for his family, Martinez said, "I am now having to pay the consequences for that."
