West Cook News

Gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) is calling for the immediate firing of Lyons Township South High School employee Dr. Jennifer Rowe. 

Rowe is the school’s "director of equity and belonging." 

Parents have been critical of her presence, noting recent attacks in which race appears to have been a motivation. 

Illinois GOP gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey | Darren Bailey for Governor

"There is no good outcome here by holding students to different standards based on race," Bailey said. "All students, regardless of race, should be held to the same standard of conduct. These racist policies are only going to serve to create more problems and potentially put kids in serious danger. The message being sent here is that as long as you meet the right racial profile you don’t have to follow the rules. Any student who commits violence against other students should be punished for those actions. Kids of all races deserve to be safe at school. Jennifer Rowe is a sick psychopath who is putting kids in danger, and she has no business being anywhere near children. She should be terminated immediately."

Bailey said he has zero tolerance for "racist" indoctrination at schools. 

"Any school adopting racist policies like so-called ‘Restorative Justice’ will be stripped of all state funding. I will use the line-item veto to zero out their state funding. Taxpayer money should not be used to fund racist indoctrination," he said.

Rowe, who was hired at a salary of $155,000 per year, recently noted the school was changing its policy to make punishments more lenient for non-white students. 

The decision comes after sophomore Heavyn Washington was arrested for a pre-meditated filmed attack on a freshman, according to West Cook News.

In that incident, Lyons Township students told West Cook News that Washington, an outspoken sophomore, "concocted a story that the victim was singing a rap song in the bathroom so she could have a reason to beat her up."

Non-white students and teachers, Rowe told the board, are unfairly penalized because they lack "similar standards" and "shared language." 

The "restorative justice" Rowe engages in has been noted to have the opposite of its intended effect. 

Daniel Buck, an English teacher and writer on education policy, noted RAND study of the theory's implementation elsewhere is "not encouraging" and that now "millions of disadvantaged schoolchildren are consigned to academic mediocrity, emotional abuse and physical threat in the name of restorative justice."

Western Springs Police have refused to release the police report of the incident, West Cook News reported.

The agency took five days to respond to the incident, allowing Washington to stay in school and near her victim in the meantime. 

In the wake of the beating by Washington, school administrators also sent the victim back to class before her father picked her up and took her to the hospital.