Several days ago, I reported on the disturbing unanimous vote by the District 135 School Board in Orland Park to hire 26-year-old math teacher Tremaine (Trey) Harris as assistant principal of Century Junior High School. For those who missed that article, Harris is a peculiar young man with a crossdressing fetish who lacks the minimum requirements for the position and posted this photo on social media, with the caption: “It should cost a billion to look this CUNTY!”
His social media posts were reportedly available on Thursday July 17 but gone, baby, gone by Friday July 18. Rumor has it that he was urged to scrub his social media accounts by a member of the school interview committee. (An email and phone call to the school on this matter remain unanswered as of this writing.)
So, in addition to his lack of qualifications, vulgarity, and queer sartorial hobby, Harris is dishonest. He seeks to conceal from the parents whose children he will serve that he is perverse. And it appears he may have been aided and abetted in this deception by a school employee.
In his mad scrubbing frenzy, Harris missed one bit of online information: his job-seeking post on Nanny Lane, a website that connects nanny hopefuls with families. Somehow, I doubt families will be rushing to hire Harris to care for their little ones.
This scandalous hiring of an unqualified young man whose salary is $90,000 is just a dirty corner of the District 135 house where corruption merits a housecleaning as thorough as Harris’ scrubbing of his social media.
The scandals began in 2016 when former Superintendent DJ Skogsberg sexually harassed married assistant principal Dr. Heather Conrad after she had expressed to Skogsberg her interest in moving into a principal position.
Several months after his failed seduction attempts, Skogsberg told Conrad “she was being relieved of her position and was given the choice to resign, be fired, or … be demoted to a teaching position.”
Hell hath no fury like a powerful man whose sexual advances are scorned.
Conrad sued for sex discrimination and retaliation, and in 2019 settled with the district and was named assistant principal of Century Junior High. Scurrilous Skogsberg resigned in disgrace.
Conrad has her PhD, is much beloved by District 135 community members, and has faithfully served her community for twenty-five years despite being treated shabbily by more than one person in district leadership.
Beginning in 2022, district leaders who were in leadership when Conrad sued the district began inflating trivial incidents in order to contrive a rationale for disciplining both the well-respected Conrad and equally well-respected former principal Dr. Brian Horn. Then just last spring, the school board told both Conrad and Horn they would be “reclassified,” removed from their administrative positions, and reassigned to the classroom. Horn resigned, and Conrad agreed to be reassigned to the classroom after six years as assistant principal.
Next, the board hired the inexperienced and creepy Tremaine Harris to replace Heather Conrad. Harris came from a math teaching position at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy of Social Justice where according to the Illinois State Board of Education report card, only 3.1% of students were proficient in math in 2024, down from 6.9% in 2023. District 135 hired a math teacher from a school where math scores declined in the two years he was teaching there. Remarkable.
Harris’ hiring is a slap in the face of all decent people, and particularly disrespectful to people of faith in this conservative community with significant Muslim and Christian populations.
Community members have some hefty tasks before them. They should ask each school board member what their positions are on the controversial issue of cross-sex impersonation and the ethics of affirming it via curricula, supplementary resources, false pronoun use in the classroom, and hiring.
They should demand the district rescind Harris’ job offer.
And they should get about the business of ousting the school board, anyone involved in advising Harris to bury his social media posts, and any administrators involved in abusing their power.