A federal judge is expected to decide in coming days if a former assistant principal at Highland Park High School will be allowed to continue suing Highland Park’s high school district for demoting her twice in alleged retaliation for her role in helping to bring to light alleged prior actions by previous administrators at the high school to allegedly cover up alleged misconduct.
Earlier this spring, Amy Burnetti, a former assistant principal at the north suburban high school, filed suit against Township High School District 113.
District 113 operates Highland Park High School and Deerfield High School.
Noelle C. Brennan
| Noelle Brennan & Associates
The lawsuit also names as defendants current Highland Park High School Principal Deborah Finn; former interim District 113 superintendents Linda Yonke and Ben Martindale; current District 113 Board of Education member Elizabeth Garlovsky; and former District 113 board member Debbie Hymen.
The lawsuit centers on actions allegedly taken against Burnetti about three years ago.
INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED
At that time, according to the complaint, District 113 remained under investigation by the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office for alleged misconduct at Highland Park High School.
According to the complaint, Burnetti was promoted to assistant principal at Highland Park at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year. Her promotion was one of several at the high school in the wake of the mass resignation from HPHS’ former principal staff, including former Principal Tom Koulentes and assistant principals Eileen McMahon and Casey Wright.
Koulentes has since been hired as principal at Libertyville High School. McMahon now serves as principal of Maine West High School in Des Plaines.
Those resignations had come about one year after District 113 hired Chris Dignam as its superintendent.
According to the complaint, following the three resignations, Dignam, Burnetti and other administrators at HPHS allegedly discovered the prior HPHS administration had allegedly “deleted or destroyed thousands of school records.”
“Specifically, the new HPHS administration discovered and observed (via video cameras) that the prior administration had taken carts full of school records out of the facility, had put other records in a trash compactor, and had improperly deleted thousands of electronic records,” Burnetti alleged in her complaint, filed in April.
“Ultimately, the new HPHS administration determined more than 10,000 documents were destroyed, and 10,000-20,000 documents were found in the trash compactor.
“The destroyed records included confidential student materials such as 504 Plans, student psychological assessments, Individualized Education Programs, and financial records, among other items.
“Other items missing or destroyed included a football helmet and equipment worn by a student who was injured during a HPHS football game and who later filed a suit for damages.”
According to the complaint, Dignam’s administration then allegedly ordered an investigation, to be conducted by District 113’s attorneys at the firm of Robbins Schwartz.
Robbins Schwartz then referred the matter to the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office for a potential criminal investigation.
According to the complaint, Burnetti “provided evidence and testimony” to assist with the investigation.
Further, Burnetti asserted Dignam’s administration in 2017-2018 also reversed past decisions by HPHS administrators to allegedly allow a “child sex offender, who was a parent of a HPHS student” to visit the HPHS campus “without supervision.”
According to the complaint, Dignam ended that practice, and assigned Burnetti to deliver the decision to the wife of the alleged child sex offender.
The complaint does not identify the alleged offender.
FIRINGS AND DEMOTIONS
However, Burnetti asserts that decision did not sit well with certain District 113 board members, who allegedly were friends with those parents. According to the complaint, some board members allegedly sought to reverse the decision, but were rebuffed.
Burnetti asserts she was offered and accepted a new contract as assistant principal for the 2018-2019 school year.
However, according to the complaint, District 113 board members, allegedly including Garlovsky and Hymen, allegedly began to mount a campaign against Burnetti and others in Dignam’s administration, allegedly encouraging parents, teachers and others to “raise complaints about the new HPHS Administration” and to “file large numbers of complaints.”
The District 113 board then fired Dignam in 2018 and reassigned former HPHS Principal Elizabeth Robertson.
Finn, who the complaint alleges has “close professional and personal ties” with Koulentes, was then installed as HPHS principal.
According to the complaint, the interim superintendents then allegedly demoted Burnetti to her former position as Department Chair of Applied Arts and Fine Arts, allegedly at Finn’s suggestion, 19 days after Burnetti had been given a new contract as assistant principal.
A year later, Burnetti was allegedly demoted again, when she was allegedly stripped of her position as department chair. According to the complaint, Burnetti allegedly was given a choice by HPHS administrators to either resign or receive a “notice of non-renewal,” which would end Burnetti’s ability to be promoted back into administration.
Burnetti claims she refused to resign, and was demoted back to teacher for the 2020-2021 school year.
After Dignam and his team were removed, District 113 through its general counsel, Anthony Loizzi, wrote a letter to the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office, asking prosecutors to end the criminal investigation into the alleged misconduct at HPHS.
“Specifically, Mr. Loizzi stated that the District did not ‘suffer any meaningful harm’ and ‘neither the students nor the community at large have been adversely affected,’” Burnetti wrote in her complaint.
In her complaint, Burnetti asserted District 113 and the individual defendants allegedly violated her First Amendment speech rights and her 14th Amendment rights to due process; violated Illinois’ whistleblower protection law; and illegally retaliated against her for her part in assisting the investigation into the alleged misconduct.
SUIT FILED TOO LATE?
Neither District 113 nor any of the individual defendants have yet responded to the substance of Burnetti’s claims in court.
Rather, the defendants have asked a federal judge to dismiss nearly all of the claims, particularly including Burnetti’s claims surrounding her 2018 demotion.
According to motions filed by the defendants, Burnetti waited too long to file suit, as they assert her lawsuit falls outside a two-year time limit to file suit over her demotion.
The defendants also asked the judge to remove some of the individual defendants from the lawsuit, because they either allegedly had little or nothing to do with the actions allegedly taken against her, or are not any longer in a position to do anything about Burnetti’s claims.
Burnetti, however, countered by saying she had no real notice that the district and administrators were allegedly retaliating against her over her role in the investigations, until after District 113 asked the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office to drop the criminal probe in the spring of 2019, two years before she filed suit.
The District 113 defendants said that argument comes up short, because Burnetti “knew of her involvement in the investigation and that certain Defendants opposed investigation (sic), allegedly resulting in her demotion and the termination of other administrators in 2018.”
“The bottom line is that Plaintiff (Burnetti) knew of the facts that gave rise to her claim related to her 2018 demotion at the time of the demotion,” the defendants wrote in a reply brief, filed Sept. 10.
The judge who is presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp, has not yet indicated when he might rule on District 113’s motion to dismiss.
Burnetti is represented in the case by attorneys Noelle C. Brennan and Amanda Burns, of the Noelle Brennan & Associates firm, of Chicago.
District 113 and the individual defendants are represented by attorneys William Pokorny and Caroline K. Kane, of Franczek P.C., of Chicago.