CPS teachers suspended for ‘inappropriate’ homework

Two elementary school teachers served two-day, unpaid suspensions after students at North Avondale Montessori took home a math worksheet with questions that referenced alcohol and food stamps.

Nick Davis-Dewey and Christine McKenzie were put on leave Aug. 24. They had disciplinary hearings on Aug. 26 and served their suspensions Aug. 27 and 28.

Neither could be immediately reached for comment. The discipline notices state the suspensions were for “unprofessional behavior and inappropriate conduct.”

“Should you engage in this type of behavior in the future, you will be subject to further disciplinary action, up to and including termination,” the notices state.

McKenzie and Davis-Dewey teach 9- 12-year-olds at North Avondale. The suspensions surround a series of addition and subtraction word problems. One problem referenced a 48-ounce recipe that calls for 23 ounces of fruit juice and liquor. “The rest is club soda. How much of the recipe is club soda?”

Other problems referenced the Jones and Johnson families, whose food-stamp allotments are being cut.

CPS launched an investigation after a parent posted a picture of the homework on Facebook. At the Aug. 24 board of education meeting, CPS superintendent Mary Ronan said the questions are not part of any CPS curriculum.

“We don’t know where it came from,” she said. “Obviously, the teachers were using old material from another state. (We) don’t even know how it would have gotten into our building.”

Community response has been mixed, but there is heavy support for McKenzie and Davis-Dewey. Of 12 emails CPS administrators received regarding the homework, 11 were in support of the teachers, according to an Enquirer public records request.

Several people wrote that, regardless if the questions were appropriate, the issue was handled in-house, and the investigation was unnecessary.

“I am terribly frustrated at the escalation of this situation,” wrote one parent.

“Teachers are busy,” wrote another, “and sometimes things slip through the cracks. It is more than enough to ask them to not use the material again.”

Monica Williams, though, said the homework is just a tiny example of larger injustices entrenched in CPS. Williams is a parent of five CPS graduates, she said, and they “had to fight every battle imaginable in this school system – from racism, classism, sexism – you name it, I fought it with my kids.”

Williams spoke during the Aug. 24 meeting. She said the situation tells her that not much has changed since her children were young. She said the names from the food-stamp questions, Jones and Johnson, are common African American names.

Black people are constantly asked to “forgive and get over it,” Williams said. “This is an issue, I think, we need to spend more time on. Not asking us to forgive and get over it but actually doing something about it so it doesn’t happen again.”