Pete Leki ‘made a magical place’ at a North Side school garden. Now his job — and the ecology program he created — is on the line. What went wrong?

Pete Leki, longtime director of the award-winning ecology program at a North Side elementary school, typically spends the first week of school welcoming students, ordering materials for the fall curriculum and reminding everyone to compost lunch waste.

This year, he advocated to be reinstated.

Leki appealed to the Chicago Board of Education to help end a monthslong standoff that stems from a district push to get Leki to become a Chicago Public Schools employee and take a pay cut around 25%.

As this stalemate stretches into September, some Waters Elementary parents are concerned about the future of the program — which drew many of them to the Ravenswood Gardens school in the first place.

“There’s no plan. There’s no transition. It feels like there’s a personal fight going on,” said Popahna Brandes, parent of a fourth grader. “This is what we’re modeling for our children? This does not feel like it’s adults coming to the table.”

Leki himself used to be a Waters parent and is now a grandparent to a student there. Three decades ago, while heading the Waters’ Local School Council, Leki led the effort to transform the school’s asphalt into a lush area that is now said to be home to more than 130 species of native plants.

Not long after, Leki became director of the school’s ecology program, overseeing the school’s natural spaces, supervising students as they harvest crops and leading field trips to places such as Sauganash to hunt invasive European buckthorn and Montrose Point to cast a pole for gobies. He has spearheaded compost and recycling initiatives as well. This work led him to be featured in CPS’ climate action plan for 2021-23.

Waters’ natural areas stretch across the southern border of the school and surround a playing field. There are benches and stumps to sit on among the foliage. Mulch covers much of the school grounds.

For many years, Leki was paid directly by the school’s fundraising arm, WatersToday, which is run by parent volunteers. But more than a year ago, CPS officials told Waters leaders that Leki needed to move under the district’s umbrella, a shift that came with a pay cut.

WatersToday reported assets of about $350,000 for the fiscal year that ended in June 2020, according to the most recent annual report on file with the state. Around $82,000 was spent on ecology science that year — the largest program expenditure, followed by $69,000 for arts and music and nearly $36,000 for lunch and recess support, the report shows.

In a statement, CPS said Leki’s work needed to be a staff position to ensure the school could provide the necessary oversight. The proposal was that WatersToday would continue to fund the program and Leki’s wages, with approval from the administration and the LSC.

The offer was for Leki to earn $120 an hour for instructional time during school hours, which CPS says is the same rate as certified teachers for after-school programming. CPS says Leki earned approximately $80,000 a year; the new salary would be $58,440. Leki says he was being paid $82,000 annually, including $4,000 in expenses.

The CPS plan didn’t initially sit well with Leki, who took to his watersecology.org site to fight back. “Ecology program in jeopardy” read a July 4 post. “The Ecology Program at Waters is going to be defunded by 30%,” Leki wrote. “Some people in the LSC and school community have suggested that the garden is underutilized, a waste of space, and that what happens in the garden is a mystery. They say the ecology program is too expensive.”

These posts didn’t sit well with Waters Principal Peter Rutkowski, who landed the top job in the fall of 2021. Leki provided the Tribune and the Board of Education emails that appear to show behind-the-scenes discussions with Rutkowski. CPS did not make Rutkowski available for comment.

“Chicago Public Schools and our principals value our community members who contribute their skills and passions as volunteers or contractors to improve student experiences and outcomes,” the district said in a statement. “We know that outside- or after-school programming offers important opportunities for students to learn, explore their passions, apply their knowledge and test new skills.”

The statement continued: “Our school leaders strive to consider all input from students, parents, staff and community members before making programming or staffing decisions.”

It seems Leki and Rutkowski were negotiating up until the moment Rutkowski announced in a July 20 note to the school community that Leki would not return, and alternate curriculum would include students taking environmental science for half the year and technology the other half. Field trips, after-school programming and garden-upkeep plans were in flux.

“Unfortunately, after many lengthy discussions with Mr. Leki, community members and Waters parents over the past months, we have not been able to come to a mutually agreeable arrangement for the coming school year,” Rutkowski said in his July 20 message. “Notably, the communications sent on behalf of the ‘Waters School Community Gardens’ throughout July, both in content and disposition, were a major barrier in coming to an arrangement and setting a solid foundation for moving forward together.”

CPS says Leki twice rejected the school’s proposal to become an employee under the district’s terms before submitting a counter proposal that was “not acceptable.” Leki denies this. In an email provided to the Tribune and the Board of Education, Leki told Rutkowski and LSC chairperson Liz Chandran on July 15 he would accept the offer, either as a CPS vendor or employee, and that he would seek to restore the other 30% of his salary through grants and fundraising through an independent organization. Chandran declined to comment to the Tribune.

“The entire community was under the false impression that I had refused the salary reduction and refused to be a CPS employee,” Leki said in an email to the Tribune. “There’s written proof, yet the entire recorded LSC meeting shows the principal did not correct this misinformation and later doubled down on it multiple times in writing to the community and it was later repeated to the press by CPS.”

Nathan Hunter, an LSC member who participated in negotiations, sent an email to Leki and Rutkowski shortly after the July 20 schoolwide announcement to express his disappointment in the abrupt turn of events. Hunter told the Tribune it’s not too late to find common ground and extend another offer to Leki. He stressed the importance and uniqueness of the ecology program and garden.

“If the program is truly gone, it is such an immense loss that I think a lot of people don’t really completely appreciate,” Hunter said.

It’s unclear if Leki’s appeal to the Chicago Board of Education at its Aug. 24 meeting moved the needle — Leki said it’s been “complete silence” from the district. The topic is sure to come up at the next Waters LSC meeting, scheduled for Sept. 20. In the meantime, a change.org petition calling for resolution to the dispute has garnered more than 1,300 signatures.

Rutkowski has backers as well, such as those who lead WatersToday.

“WatersToday will continue to support the initiatives outlined by Waters LSC and are confident this change in practices will help ensure that our beautiful school garden and the environmental science curriculum will continue to grow and thrive,” a statement from the organization reads. “Already in the first week of school, students are in the garden harvesting seeds and planning for environmental science field trips are underway. We are excited about the future of our school and this program.”

In his Aug. 26 newsletter to families, Rutkowski revealed plans for a fall field trip. Sixth graders will be able to stay overnight at the Dunes Learning Center in northwest Indiana in early November, he wrote.

At last month’s board meeting, Meg Ford said she moved her family so her children could attend Waters and participate in the ecology program.

“(Leki) takes the students on trips to learn about the ecology of our city, the river, the lake, the forest and the prairies. He teaches the students about composting, about climate change and about the ways that they can change their own habits to live in harmony with Chicago’s unique ecosystem,” Ford said by phone.

“The ecology program at Waters provided my children with a trustworthy, kind and knowledgeable community to grow up in. It provided them with the tools to think intelligently about their own decisions. It instilled the love of nature and an appreciation of the beautiful landscape that is produced through careful stewardship.”

Parent Trevor de Brauw said the Waters garden has been a sanctuary for his fifth grader, and it’s the reason why he’s at the school.

“As soon as Demian saw the garden, he just fell in love with the school and the ecology program. It was really a driving factor in why we chose to uproot him from Ravenswood (Elementary) and bring him to Waters,” de Brauw told the Tribune. “He’s since become totally enamored with Mr. Leki, and Mr. Leki has had an affect on him that it would be hard to estimate.”

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Third grader Amelia Jean Walle said the kids’ voice has gotten lost in this conflict. About 630 students enrolled in Waters last year. Amelia said her friends called Leki’s departure “unfair.” Personally, she appreciated how Leki created a habitat for squirrels and hopes he is always welcome in the green space he built.

“He made a magical place in the school garden,” said Amelia, 8, who often saw Leki in the garden while eating lunch there with her dad during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across the district, school gardens have become more prevalent, albeit on a smaller scale. Over the summer, CPS touted its 400-plus learning gardens and a state-of-the-art agriculture lab that serves as a training space for teachers and school garden teams.

A spokesperson for Kimbal Musk — owner of The Kitchen bistro in River North and brother to Elon Musk — said his Big Green organization has built 200 learning garden classrooms in CPS. This initiative was kick-started nearly a decade ago with $1 million in leftover private funds raised to host the NATO Summit in Chicago in 2012.

Meanwhile, at last month’s board meeting, the community garden program at the University of Chicago Charter School in Woodlawn was cited as a reason the board should consider a five-year charter renewal. “We have partnered with community members, students, families and staff to learn how to grow the food that we eat, offered free you-pick produce and shown how to improve our environment, from pollinator projects to a sustainable green roof,” STEM teacher and garden leader Kate Carter told the board.

Also last month, the foundation established by celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse announced it will open its newest Emeril’s Culinary Garden and Teaching Kitchen at the Academy for Global Citizenship, a CPS charter school on the Southwest Side. The estimated completion date for this project — the first in Chicago — is August 2023.

tswartz@tribpub.com