IL: Two more lawsuits allege stripsearches at Chicago Public Schools

Incidents occurred at Perspectives Charter Calumet Middle School and Fenger Academy High School, complaints say
By Ted Gregory Tribune reporter
January 25, 2009

Two weeks after the Chicago Public Schools were hit with lawsuits alleging inappropriate searches of students, two more families have filed complaints of similar misconduct.

The lawsuits said that an 8th-grade girl at Perspectives Charter Calumet Middle School, 8131 S. May St., and a junior male student at Fenger Academy High School, 11220 S. Wallace St., were strip-searched last year.

"I was very furious," said the 16-year-old Fenger student. The boy said he was taken into a back room near the main office after he arrived late for school on Oct. 9 and was told that school officials suspected he had been selling drugs.

A school disciplinary officer told the student to pull down his pants and underpants, said the boy and his attorney, James Fennerty. The student was not asked to remove his T-shirt.

No drugs were found.

"I felt that they did it for no real reason," the student said Saturday. "I never had a record of selling drugs. I could see if I had gotten into trouble before, but I had never gotten into trouble."

The Perspectives search allegedly occurred Dec. 20 when the girl was among several pulled from a school assembly, told she was suspected of concealing a razor blade and taken into a bathroom, said Fennerty, who filed the complaints Friday. There, she was told to pull down her pants and take off the shirts over her bra, Fennerty said.

A uniformed woman—the girl is unsure whether she was a Chicago police officer or a school security guard—then grabbed and "jiggled" the girl's bra, Fennerty said. She was not asked to remove her underpants, he added. No razor blade was found.

The school district is "finishing up our investigation of the Perspectives allegations," Chicago Public Schools spokesman Michael Vaughn said Saturday. "The Fenger investigation is completed, and a decision on discipline is pending."

He declined to elaborate.

tgregory@tribune.com