The principal of Jones College Prep High School has been removed as Chicago Public Schools investigates an incident where a Jones student wore a German military uniform on Halloween that was widely interpreted to represent a Nazi soldier.
Distressed students pointed the costume out to their principal, Joe Powers, but Powers explained to students the boy was dressed as a Communist-era East German soldier, Powers wrote Monday in a note to staff.
“I tried to explain the context and time period of the uniform to the students who spoke with me, but apparently the student who wore the uniform may have told people it was from the 1940s,” Powers wrote.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez released the following statement Friday afternoon when announcing Powers' removal, which is effective immediately pending the results of the district's investigation.
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"As a District that serves over 320,000 students and employs over 40,000 employees from all different backgrounds, we all have a shared responsibility to ensure all of our students and staff feel safe, supported, welcomed, and valued.
That responsibility means declaring clearly and unequivocally that intolerance, bigotry, and bias-based harm have no place in any CPS school or any Chicago community.
That responsibility also means that when harm occurs, it must be called out, it must be addressed, and we must work together to heal.
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As many of you may have heard, seen, or read, there was an incident earlier this week where a member of one of our school communities wore a German military uniform to school as a Halloween costume — an act that was widely recognized by many students, staff, and members of our broader CPS community as antisemitic.
This incident caused harm to many students and staff, and it is completely inconsistent with our values as a school district. It also comes at a time when hateful speech and hateful attacks are on the rise, especially against Jewish Americans.
In response, CPS has launched a full investigation into the incident in accordance with our District’s protocols for processing bias-based harm. To protect privacy, we cannot provide any further details on those direct interactions.
Furthermore, CPS has removed the school’s leader from their principal duties, effective immediately, pending the results of that investigation.
If we are going to protect our school communities from bias-based harm, there must be accountability when harm occurs.
There must also be space for learning and healing in the wake of traumatic incidents, and an effort to stop them from happening again. As educators, leaders, and staff, we have an obligation not only to prevent bias-based harm in CPS schools, but to ensure that when students and staff go out to the broader community, they carry with them the values of tolerance, inclusion, and anti-bigotry.
Below are some lessons and handouts that educators and families can access for discussing this topic with students.
● CPS’ Day After Discourse Guide for Difficult or Controversial Topics toolkit includes protocols and guidance for teachers and administrators on how to have discussions on difficult topics in the classroom.
● Collection of Resources: Old Hatreds, New Paradigms: Combating Antisemitism in the 21st Century
● Explainer: Antisemitism and Its Impacts
● Teaching Idea: Acts of Hate in Schools
● Teaching Idea: Responding to Antisemitism in the Classroom
Thank you to our partners at Facing History and Ourselves for these powerful resources.
As the leader of CPS, I am committed to ensuring that our District is one where students feel safe, welcome, and proud of who they are and their background. Achieving this takes hard work and commitment from all of us to practice tolerance, reject bigotry and hate, create safe spaces for students and staff to express their concerns, and ultimately heal and move forward together. I thank everyone — staff, students, parents and guardians — for their continued support and partnership in this effort."
A video of the male student goose stepping during a school Halloween parade — accompanied by a chorus of boos — has since made the rounds on social media.
On Thursday, in an email to parents, Powers acknowledged the situation should have been handled differently.
“As more information has come to light, including additional video of the incident and through conversations with our staff and students, we realize that this has greatly impacted our community and acknowledge that we should have handled the incident with greater care, and communicated more clearly with the school community about the nature of the incident,” Powers said.
“Let me say clearly and plainly that what occurred caused harm to many of our students and staff who recognized this as an act of antisemitism. Let me also say clearly and plainly that intolerance, bigotry, and bias-based behaviors have no place in our school,” Powers said.
Cassie Creswell, who has a child at Jones and is a former chair of the Local School Council, said Powers should have immediately made the student change out of the costume and called the student’s parents to have a serious discussion about the situation.
“I’m very concerned,” Creswell said. “I have been tracking the rise in right-wing extremism in the suburbs for a while now, and this is a real thing, and it’s connection to actual physical violence is a real thing and to have the response from the school be what it was, it’s very disturbing.”
Special support staff were scheduled to be at the school this week, and safe spaces would be made available “for students to process the harm they’ve experienced,” Powers said in his email to parents.
On Friday, the Chicago Teachers Union called on Powers to step down.
“We call on him to resign — and if he refuses, for CPS to remove him from his leadership position at Jones,” CTU said in a statement.
A student walkout is planned for Monday to protest the handling of racial and ethnic discrimination at the school.
Yamali Rodas, a senior at Jones, plans to participate.
“I’m kind of disappointed in the way that administration has responded,” said Rodas, who heads up the school’s Association of Latin American Students. “They should have set him aside and had a conversation with him about why it was inappropriate.”
A CPS spokesman Friday said in an email that, “Halloween celebrations are intended to build a sense of community and not cause bias-based harm. School and District leaders are working together to address this matter and will inform the Jones community of any updates.”
It’s not the first time Powers has found himself in a controversial situation at Jones, which is an elite selective enrollment school located in the South Loop.
He survived an effort to oust him earlier this year by the Local School Council, which is partly composed of parents.
Earlier this year, several members of the group, including Creswell, alleged that Powers violated the district’s residency requirement by maintaining a primary home in Missouri, failed to properly handle teacher misconduct complaints and fostered an unwelcoming environment for students and staff of color and transgender and gender nonconforming students.
In April, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said of their investigation into the matter: “There is insufficient evidence of misconduct by Mr. Powers at this time on which to base an action for involuntary dismissal.”
