Another public school scandal has reared its deformed head, this time at a junior high in District 135 in Orland Park, Illinois.
The school board just unanimously voted to hire 26-year-old Tremaine Harris as the assistant principal of Century Junior High, with a salary of $90,000. Since according to ChatGPT, “the average age of middle school assistant principals at the time of hiring typically falls in the range of 32-42 years old,” who exactly is this educational prodigy that merits a $90,000 assistant principal position after a mere four years of teaching?
Here’s a 2023 photo he posted on Instagram with the caption: “It should cost a billion to look this CUNTY!”
He posted this while a math teacher. Any man who poses effeminately in a photo wearing women’s clothes is an unfit role model for children. Any man who alludes to feminine things in misogynistic, foulmouthed language is an unfit role model for children.
It doesn’t matter if this were only one post. No decent adult—especially a teacher—would do and say such things.
Harris has now scrubbed his social media presence as thoroughly as Hillary Clinton scrubbed her email server. Oddly, he even disabled his LinkedIn account. Apparently, he wants to conceal who he really is from his employer and Orland Park parents. But don’t they have the right to know what the kinda, sorta man whose salary they pay has posted? Don’t parents have a right to know what the man who will serve as a role model for their children thinks about gender and sexuality and shares in public posts?
According to OPen Record,
A public school leadership appointment should be based on clear qualifications and a transparent process — not silence, confusion, and post-hoc discovery. …
Tremaine Harris … was entirely new to the district — and introduced with nothing. No résumé. No background. Just a vote and a starting salary of $90,000. …
If board members reviewed résumés or compared qualifications privately, the public wasn’t told. That lack of disclosure makes it difficult to evaluate how — or why — these decisions were made.
The job posting qualifications include this requirement: “At least 5 years successful teaching experience.” Since Harris is a 2021 graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, it seems unlikely he has “five years of successful teaching experience.” Curiouser and curiouser.
For the past two years, he has taught math at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy of Social Justice while working on his masters in educational leadership. He needs that degree in order to advance his career ambitions, and, boy, does he have ambitions.
When the vulgar, crossdressing Harris graduated from University of Illinois in 2021, he shared in a speech that he will “See you in some years when I become secretary of education (DOE) for the United States.” YIKES. Yet one more reason to dismantle the DOE stat.
Don’t school boards perform Google searches when vetting applicants for faculty and administrative positions? If not, why not?
Or did members Nichole Browner, Alan Kastengren, Patti Thanos, Kelly Chmielewski, Ray Morandi, Linda Peckham-Dodge, and Aisha Zayyad know about Harris’ troubling social media post (and perhaps others), but dismissed it as unimportant?
Orland Park taxpayers with children in public schools should pull them out if they’re able, and then voters should vote out current board members.
Watch out Orland Parkians, the district needs a school nurse, and rumor has it “Rachel” Levine is out of work.