During a chaotic school board meeting Monday that included a vote to close the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies and the appointment of a new chief financial officer, the Evanston/Skokie District 65 board also named the next principal of Lincoln Elementary School.
Amber Samuels, a veteran Chicago Public Schools teacher who worked as a middle school principal in Tacoma, Washington, for the past two years, will take the reins at Lincoln starting July 1, Superintendent Angel Turner announced.
“Principal Samuels’ leadership style focuses on creating and strengthening relationships among both staff and students,” Turner wrote in a letter to Lincoln families earlier this week. “As an immigrant who is fluent in five languages, she also believes strongly in today’s students being prepared to collaborate, connect, and excel across the global stage.”
Before her time in Tacoma, according to Turner, Samuels spent 18 years teaching middle school science, social studies and language arts, and another five years as a middle school assistant principal, all in Chicago. Growing up, she spent Sundays with friends and family at Evanston’s Mason Park, Turner wrote.
The hiring process included a “community survey” and an interview panel of staff and families, Turner said. One of Samuels’ first tasks will be helping to hire an assistant principal, which the district is hoping to do by the start of the new school year in August, according to Turner’s letter.
No-confidence vote
A quick Google search on Samuels reveals a news story from May 2023 by Denise Whitaker of KOMO News, an ABC affiliate that reports on the Seattle metro area.
In that story, Whitaker covered a vote of “no confidence” against Samuels by her staff at Gray Middle School in Tacoma.
“The statement, which passed by a vast majority, states no confidence in both academics and safety at the school,” Whitaker wrote in the article. “The statement also said Principal Amber Samuels is responsible for student achievement, improvement of instruction, and program delivery; there have not been professional development opportunities this year.”
The piece goes on to say that teachers voted no confidence in Samuels and her assistant principal because of things like a lack of disciplinary action against students violating the school’s code of conduct and the after-school tutoring program running out of funding. A teacher told KOMO News that 93% of the staff voted in favor of the no-confidence statement.
Turner: ‘Claims against Ms. Samuels were unfounded’
Wednesday afternoon, Turner sent a follow-up email to Lincoln families addressing “several emails expressing concern regarding a couple internet articles that broadly reference a past situation involving our incoming principal.”
In that message, the superintendent said she takes hiring decisions “very seriously,” and that Samuels was “highly recommended as a strong candidate” across multiple interviews. Turner and the school board were also aware of the no-confidence vote before approving the hire.
“Ms. Samuels spoke very candidly about the situation in her current district and the handful of individuals who spearheaded this negative attack,” Turner said. “I can assure you that the stories reported are taken highly out of context and do not accurately represent the situation. Any claims against Ms. Samuels were unfounded. The vote of ‘no confidence’ referenced in the article was based on the vote of five individuals and was not union sponsored.”
It’s unclear how the vote could have been taken by only five people, given the 93% figure referenced in the KOMO News article. The RoundTable contacted Whitaker, who did not remember exact numbers for staff participation in the vote. She said much of the concern centered around “threats of violence from a disgruntled teacher and from a student, that Principal Samuels failed to tell staff about.”
The teachers union in Tacoma then “filed Discriminatory Practices/Systemic Bias complaints with the district,” though the vote itself was not conducted by the union, according to Whitaker’s notes from last year. Union leadership, PTA representatives, the teacher referenced in the article and Tacoma Public Schools all did not respond to emails and phone calls from the RoundTable this week.
The Tacoma school district investigated the staff’s concerns in partnership with the union at the time, and “much of what occurred was part of an investigation involving other school personnel and cannot be shared,” according to Turner.
Turner also defended Samuels’ “student-centered leadership style” and asked the Lincoln community to give her “the warm welcome she deserves.”
“Books (or people in this context) should never be judged by their cover or a ‘review’ on the internet,” Turner wrote. “We must also recognize and mitigate the harm (unintended or not) that is caused when the media perpetuates false or one-sided narratives, especially for people of color. There is always more complexity, multiple perspectives, and judgment should be reserved.”
District 65 names new Lincoln Elementary School principal is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.