Controversy Surrounds Possible LFHS Principal Pick

Controversy has surrounded the presumed top candidate for the position of Lake Forest High School principal before her name was even supposed to be made public.

A standing-room only, vocal crowd filled the District 115 board of Education meeting room early Tuesday morning with opinions both for and against the potential hiring of Dr. Chala Holland to the post, according to the Daily North Shore (DNS).

Holland, currently Assistant Principal at Oak Park River Forest High School and a former director of academic support and summer school principal at Evanston Township High School, has been criticized by some DNS letter writers as being both too inexperienced and with viewpoints too controversial.

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According to DNS commenter Donald Russ, who attended the meeting, three residents and six non-residents favored and 16 people, all residents, opposed the hiring of Holland, whose name was not supposed to be made public but leaked to the public recently.

According to previous DNS reports, “learning the candidate’s name prompted many people to do a Google search, which came up with links to a Facebook page and website for her consulting firm, Holland Educational Consulting Group (HECG), and to other social media accounts belonging to her or the consultancy – all of which were removed from the internet less than 24 hours later.

A post on the Facebook page for HECG, dated February 22, 2014, showed an image of Malcolm X with the quote “Only A Fool Would Let His Enemy Teach His Children” along with a comment from HECG stating “His words continue to resonate. His life will never be forgotten.”

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A post on the website for HECG, dated January 1, 2013, focused on academic tracking, and how it perpetuates racism in schools, and about white privilege and internalized racism.”

All these posts were taken down after Holland’s name was mentioned as a possible LFHS principal, according to the DNS.

Since then, support and opposition has formed through DNS editorials as well.

Josh Seldess, History Division Head at Oak Park and River Forest High School, said Holland “has implemented numerous interventions to enhance student learning. Students now benefit from a Tutoring Center staffed throughout the school day, before, and after school; explicit literacy instruction embedded directly into classroom pedagogy; and executive functioning strategies incorporated throughout the entire curriculum.”

But Jennifer Neubauer pointed to the “controversial and offensive views” as well as inexperience, for major causes of concern.

“Research reveals Chala Holland has never been a principal, has only six years of administrative experience in academically mediocre high schools, and is only 13 years out of student teaching,” she wrote.

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On her views, Neubauer claims Holland has “expounded on her blog (before it was taken down this past weekend after her candidacy was leaked) that even racially diverse schools are ‘at their core’ still ‘beacons of racial inequities disguised by a false notion of meritocracy and the reality of white privilege and internalized racism.’ If that’s what she thinks of ‘white privilege’ and white ‘internalized racism’ in racially diverse schools, how could she possibly view LFHS, with a population that is 90% white and 1.2% black in a friendlier light?”

After Tuesday’s meeting, the board announced another Special Meeting will be planned at some point between June 1 and 9 and that the district will continue to consider Holland’s candidacy.