West Cook News

Lyons Township High School teacher Tom Stukel is out after 17 years at the institution, noting the diversity, equity and inclusion training at the school is destroying the education environment.

Stukel, who taught English, film as well as dual enrollment courses through a partnership with Indiana University, said he and his wife are leaving the state as well, headed for Miami Beach, Florida.

“Just over the past few years things have changed drastically,” Stukel told West Cook News. “I see the harm that it's doing to children and it's wrong and that's why I keep calling it out.”

Stukel said he thinks he will go into another profession because of what Lyons Township has done to its teachers.

“And if this is happening in many public schools – which I know that it is – it's just not healthy and I don't want to be a part of that unhealthiness,” he said. “The way the administration promotes this is that it is supposed to be more equitable. But the problem is, is that at least what I've seen in my classroom is it's not, it's actually doing the opposite.”

Stukel noted his disdain in a letter, Patch reported.

Among the items he noted were the fact homework is no longer graded and there are no due dates, which results in a large majority of the school not engaging in actual schoolwork.

“It has had an awful impact on them; we are essentially encouraging the students not to work,” Stukel said in the letter.

He added students are given opportunities to revise work and provided shortcuts to avoid failure, such as an online academy.

Stukel also said that after he brought up the problems in the education environment, he was scolded by the administration who started compiling a list of baseless rumors in his personnel file to use in case they needed to fire him.

He closed the letter with a warning to parents.

“Parents! I write this to you, not the administration. I care about your students. I care that they get the quality education that they deserve and you expect. Parents! Be aware and be proactive to what is happening at your school and your students' classrooms. Quality change will not come from the administration, the board or even the teachers. The teachers here at LT are wonderful, caring people, but they don't have a strong enough communal voice to fight against lame policy,” Stukel wrote. “Parents! It is up to you to make the change you want for your student. Parents! Demand that the policies that are harming your children's education change.”  

The school’s DEI Director Dr. Jennifer Rowe was recently deemed "a sick psychopath who is putting kids in danger” by State Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia), a GOP gubernatorial candidate, for creating different standards “based on race” alone, West Cook News reported.

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

“Millions of disadvantaged schoolchildren are consigned to academic mediocrity, emotional abuse and physical threat in the name of restorative justice,” Daniel Buck, an English teacher and education policy writer, said in a RAND assessment of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion standards.