Tuesday, September 13, 2011

NAACP takes Dr. Grenita Lathan to task for her handling of African American employees


At last night's Board of Education meeting, the President of the Illinois NAACP, took Dr. Grenita Lathan to task for her handling of African American employees:

"... Long before most of you ever considered running for this board, the NAACP openly and loudly complained about the Districts performance when it came to African American employees in all classifications in the district from janitors to superintendents.

While we continue to be dissatisfied with performance based on a visual review of the districts staff, we are more concerned with what is happening to qualify long term staff that we have been successful in attracting to the District.

This administration has been in office for about a year and we have already lost two very strong very qualified African American females, with even more, as I am told, considering leaving the district and looking for positions outside the city of Peoria. I recognize that we have hired an African American Superintendent and I also recognize that she has recruited staff, African American, from other parts of the country. But history tells us that these are short term jobs. the very next better opportunity that presents itself to our Superintendent, it is very likely that she will leave the city of Peoria, she won’t be sticking her roots in the ground to stay here as long as we want our teachers and administrators to stay here and that is true generally of the people who are hired by top administrators, they too leave when the top administrator leaves as well, so again, we are talking about short term employees, not the kind of people that we are trying to attract to the city of Peoria, who will raise their families in this community and in fact, hopefully, install their families into our school district, because they believe it is a good school district. This trend must stop (clap clap)!

Soon you will receive a FOIA request from me asking to look at the numbers in terms of who you have hired and what the trends show. We are concerned about this problem and we wanted to pass that along in the hopes that you to, will be concerned about it."

5 comments:

Emerge Peoria said...

As much as Ms. Jenkins is being bounced around, I am surprised she has not taken her retirment and walked (maybe that's what they want her to do). Rumor has it the Principal of Roosevelt is also in the crosshairs of Administration.

Anonymous said...

Really??

barefootnhippie said...

Umm... Ms. Jenkins is welcome to take her retirement and walk. She's a bully, and she's one of the worst administrators in the district.

Anonymous said...

"You want a "Bully"?

"That was Grenita Lathan's behavior when she lived in San Diego.

"Grenny harrangued employees that weren't like her out of her workplace.

"Plus, she sent her kids to PRIVATE school instead of public....

"How do you spell B-U-L-L-Y H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E?"

Sharon Crews said...

I think we are beginning to see that side of Dr. Lathan. For instance, she places a new director at the Rickets Center. Then she orders $900,000 plus worth of new texts that probably were late getting here. Also, books are sitting in closed schools. Then she expects--probably at the last minute (after school has already started)--three people at Ricketts to retrieve and redistribute the old books, to stamp all these books, and to distribute them to the appropriate schools. Of course, remember that it would be the administration that would have to give Ricketts the information as to where the books should be sent and how many. When the job doesn't get done on time (and only after complaints go public), she punishes the "new" director and replaces him. Don't know what happened to the "old-new" director. Now I hear rumors that the principal at Woodruff might get the same treatment. The motto in 150 seems to be one strike and you're out--even if the administration was at fault in planning and facilitating implementation of the poor planning.