HYDE PARK — The Ray Elementary Local School Council has failed to pick a new principal and likely will have restart the process when the new council is formed in July.
“I’m disappointed,” said Gordon Mayer, chairman of the council. “We couldn’t come to a consensus in the end.”
Seven of the 10 members needed to agree on either Beth Bazer, assistant principal at Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, or Lisa Dallacqua, assistant principal at Inter-American Magnet School.
“We couldn’t pick one person that we could all agree was the best fit for the school,” Mayer said after the council debated the candidates for more than three hours in closed session at the school, 5631 S. Kimbark Ave.
The council failed to reach a simple majority, which would have allowed the council to send a prioritized list of candidates to the Harrison Peters, the network chief overseeing Hyde Park schools for the Chicago Public Schools, who would have made the final decision.
Mayer said the council was split between members who wanted Bazer or Dallaqua, another group that wanted to go outside the principal selection process and offer a contract to Interim Principal Antonia Hill and a final group that wanted to hand off the decision to the incoming council.
“There are certainly people who want to keep trying and we have until the end of the month,” Mayer said.
He said new local school council members will still have time to try to find a candidate that appeals to parents and teachers before CPS steps in to make a decision.
“It’s not handing it over to CPS in any way,” Mayer said.
He said the council has no meetings scheduled for the remainder of the school year, but could reconvene if there is a breakthrough among the members of the current council before the new members take their seats in July.
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