West Cook News

A student brawl at Oak Park and River Forest High School led to a school-wide lockdown this morning, according to emails from the school and a brawl video obtained by West Cook News.

The brawl occurred at 9:50 a.m. 

School communications director Karin Sullivan sent an email to parents at 10:04 a.m. alerting them to the fact that the school was in "secure and teach mode," a euphemism for a lockdown.

A follow-up email by Sullivan sent at 10:57 a.m. announced that the school had "concluded Secure and Teach (lockdown) mode."

A third email sent by Sullivan at 12:36 p.m. reported that "there was a significant student fight on the third floor of the building, involving multiple students."

"We called Secure and Teach (lockdown) in order to clear the hallways and keep everyone away from the location of the incident," Sullivan wrote. "We took advantage of the extra-long period that had been planned for drills to ensure that the involved students were safely removed from the building."

"While video of the fight is circulating in our community, due to student privacy requirements, we as a school will not be sharing additional details about the incident," Sullivan wrote. "We do want to be clear.. that physical violence is not an acceptable way of handling conflict and has no place at our school. Consequences will be issued in accordance with our Behavior Education Plan."

According to data OPRF reported to the Illinois State Board of Education, the school had 309 in-school suspension incidents including 206 students last year. Of the incidents, 92 included female students and 217 male ones; 152 included black students (49%), 88 white (28%), 39 were Hispanic (13%), and six Asian.

The high school reported 37 out-of-school suspension incidents including 29 students. Of the incidents, 25 included male students and 12 female; 26 (70%) involved black students and six white.

According to the ISBE report card, OPRF is 55 percent white, 18 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic.

Of all OPRF students, 42.4 percent failed the statewide English portion of the SAT in 2022, according to ISBE data released last week. That failure rate rose from 37.3 percent in 2021 and 34.4 percent in 2019. The SAT math portion was failed by 51.4 percent of students in 2022, up from 47.6 percent in 2021 and 41.5 percent in 2019.

OPRF's new "Behavior Education Plan" is centered upon "progressive discipline, not zero tolerance," according to documents distributed by the administration.

It calls for responding to student fights with "restorative practices," including "peace circles" that would have the student attackers and their victims sit in a circle "to talk together about the conflict, reflect on (their) roles in conflict," "reflect on impacts on self" and "determine ways to repair harm."

Once resolved, all students involved and school staff would participate in a "celebration circle," that is "purely celebratory and positive."