MOUNT GREENWOOD — A vote Tuesday evening at George F. Cassell Fine Arts School confirmed what everyone in the room already knew — neither candidate for principal has enough votes to land the job.
Six members of the Local School Council in Mount Greenwood voted in support of Eileen Scanlan, the former assistant principal at Cassell and current principal at Kate S. Kellogg Elementary School in North Beverly.
Five members of the LSC supported interim principal Cory Overstreet, who took over after serving 3½ years as assistant principal to Denise Esposito. She retired mid-year in an effort to save the school from budget cuts.
Seven votes are required in order for a candidate to be offered the job, according to a Chicago Public Schools' official in attendance.
Before the vote was even taken, members of the council had already decided to conduct a second round of interviews with the two candidates. The interviews are scheduled for 4 p.m. June 23 at the school at 11314 S. Spaulding Ave.
The council will vote again the following day. That meeting is set for 3 p.m. June 24 at the neighborhood school that serves 397 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
The council also met May 3 in the hopes of choosing a new principal. That heated meeting included passionate pleas from both parents and teachers but ultimately ended without a vote.
As school wraps up for the year, several council members as well as those in the audience Tuesday expressed concern that without a decision, CPS officials would ultimately choose a candidate for the school.
"I am asking you to honor your constituents, vote and refrain from putting this decision in the hands of strangers," Amy Wiseman said during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Wiseman is a teacher at Cassell and openly supported Scanlan in her comments. Others publicly supported Overstreet, who was at the meeting per his role as interim principal.
Despite Wiseman's comments, it's widely believed that Cassell teachers and other staff support Overstreet, while many parents and community members favor Scanlan.
This notion is supported by a vote taken among audience members after a forum May 2 where each principal candidate made his or her pitch for the job. Of the 167 votes cast, 91 were for Scanlan and and 76 were for Overstreet.
Parents overwhelmingly supported Scanlan with a 68 to 32 vote, and community members favored her by a margin of 16 to 12, said LSC chairwoman Mary Fahey Hughes, who shared the results of the poll at an earlier meeting.
Meanwhile, teachers voted 20 to 5 in favor of Overstreet. The school's non-teaching staff also supported Overstreet by a 12-2 margin, Hughes said.
Regardless, both sides seemed to agree that the principal selection was dragging on too long. Cassell's physical education teacher Tom Markel said Tuesday that he's worked under both candidates when they served as assistant principal.
Markel didn't openly support Overstreet or Scanlan. Rather, he encouraged the council to choose one of the two so that both the candidates and the school can move forward.
"You have to make the decision for this school," Markel said. "Don't let this school community fall because of this."
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