A West Chicago elementary school teacher has resigned after he was placed on leave last month for an alleged social media post that appeared to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The West Chicago Elementary School District 33 board announced during a meeting on Thursday night that it had accepted the voluntary resignation of the Gary Elementary School teacher and would enter into a separation agreement with him. The teacher, whom the Tribune is not naming, could not be reached for comment.
Around half an hour of public comment followed the announcement, as speakers voiced both disappointment in the teacher’s departure and ire over the post to his personal social media.
“Schools must be places where every student feels safe, respected and supported,” Nestor Ruiz, interim chief of staff for state Sen. Karina Villa of West Chicago, said to the board, speaking on her behalf. “That sense of safety depends on trust.”
Last week, parents, students and community members filled West Chicago City Hall to express outrage over the post, where several attendees — including a third grader — spoke to the importance of safety.
Per a written statement from Superintendent Kristina Davis, the school district on Jan. 22 “learned of concerns regarding a disruptive social media comment made by a district employee on his personal account.”
The teacher initially submitted his resignation but later that day withdrew it before the school board had an opportunity to take action, according to the statement. He then met with the district’s administration and was placed on administrative leave pending a district investigation.
An online petition encouraging community members to “show the district that you do not stand for this teacher continuing to educate” had more than 530 signatures as of Thursday night.
“(A) D33 teacher commented, ‘Go ICE!’ in response to a community article,” the petition read. “The casual way in which he publicly promoted the actions of ICE in our area is inappropriate and unsuitable for an educator.”
The board started Thursday’s meeting in closed session to discuss the “appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal” of an employee, independent contractor, volunteer, or district legal counsel, according to the board agenda for the night.
At the outset of the public portion of the meeting, which about 50 people attended, school board President Rita Balgeman said that during closed session, the board voted “to accept (the teacher’s) voluntary resignation effective immediately.”
Balgeman said the board believes “this action is the most appropriate next step for our school community at this time.” She said the district’s actions through this process were guided by legal counsel and focused on balancing the employee’s rights and due process, board policy and the “need to minimize disruption to our schools.”
Balgeman said the school board is made up of people with a range of personal and political views and that throughout their discussion, the situation was never about politics but rather about ensuring schools operate normally.
“We now look forward to restoring focus, stability and safe conditions for teaching and learning across the district,” she said.
The remainder of the meeting was primarily spent on public comment.
“Is it a prerequisite of employment to agree with the majority or the popular opinion of the day?” speaker Timothy Lorman asked the board.
Samanta Reuter, whose kids attend Gary Elementary School, spoke positively about the teacher and said she thought it was sad that he “felt like he had no choice but to resign.”
“My 8-year-old here said to me the other day that … people can make bad choices but not be bad people,” she said.
Corinne Ingrum urged the community to “pick your battles more wisely.”
“I get that the state of our country is in turmoil,” she said. “I’m not discrediting your fear. We all have fear. But the problem is bigger than any one person. … If you want change, please speak to your elected politicians, not ruin one man’s life.”
Still, others reiterated the need for retaining students’ sense of security and acceptance.
“You cannot expect students to feel safe at the care of someone who celebrates an agency that terrorizes their loved ones,” said Keely Walker, a former art teacher at Gary Elementary. Walker, who said she left teaching at the end of the 2024-25 school year, recalled her students telling her they were scared back in January of last year.
“(They) told me that they had heard that bad men were coming to take people like their families,” she said. In response, Walker said she told them that “their job was to play, laugh and learn, and that it was the adults’ job to protect them.”
Audrey Luhmann, whose homeschooled teenage sons for months have been on the front lines of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, urged the board, “A healthy community protects its members.”
“A healthy community,” she continued, “welcomes and celebrates a diversity of culture and experience. … We keep all of us safe.”
Thursday’s meeting came as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has reached a flashpoint following the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month. In early January, after spending last fall sweeping the Chicago area in a 64-day blitz, the Department of Homeland Security launched what the agency has called its “largest immigration enforcement operation ever.” The Trump administration this week reduced the number of immigration officers in Minnesota by roughly a quarter.
Meanwhile, a shutdown looms for DHS as Democratic leaders threaten to vote down a spending bill for the agency unless there are dramatic changes to ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies.
Controversial social media posts have sparked backlash at grade school and college campuses alike in recent months.
The Illini Republicans club at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is facing a complaint by the school’s Title VI Office after posting an illustration on social media of a masked gunman holding a weapon to a kneeling man’s head alongside the caption, “Only traitors help invaders.”
Last fall, in the wake of the September assassination of conservative activist and Prospect Heights native Charlie Kirk, scores of educators — including several in Illinois and Indiana — faced criticism over social posts they made in response to the fatal shooting.
After Thursday’s meeting, West Chicago Mayor Daniel Bovey said the suburb was a community that “has come together in the most difficult of times.” He said he thought the district had gone through the due process that they needed to go through.
“We are looking forward to moving on,” he told the Tribune, “and are going to continue to try to make everyone in our community feel as safe as we are able to make them feel.”
Chicago Tribune’s Angie Leventis Lourgos and John Kim and The Associated Press contributed.
