As Whitney Young High School principal retires after 27 years, the job could be the most sought-after in CPS

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School Principal Joyce Kenner envisions her successor as someone who commits to leading the selective enrollment school for several years, attends most student activities and maintains an open-door policy.

This person should not have dollar signs in their eyes, she said.

“If you’re applying for this position for money, you need to forget it. And it’s the honest-to-God truth,” Kenner, 65, told the Tribune. “I didn’t even know how much money I made until a couple years ago. That sounds horrible, but I didn’t. I didn’t care. I mean, I knew I would make enough money to do what I need to do, but it’s not about the money.”

Kenner, who makes about $175,000 per year, announced last week she is retiring after about 27 years as head of Chicago’s first public magnet high school. Kenner and five other CPS principals who have the same salary are paid the most out of all principals in the district, according to CPS data from March. The job could be the most sought-after position in Chicago Public Schools this summer as the Near West Side school is considered one of the top high schools in the country.

Whomever is selected as Whitney Young’s fourth principal has big shoes to fill, as Kenner’s fans say she leaves behind a legacy of stressing academic excellence, prioritizing students and serving as the school’s No. 1 cheerleader on nearly every sideline.

“Whitney Young, how successful it’s been, from attracting the faculty and staff that we have, the performance of the school, our test scores, where these kids end up getting accepted into colleges, she’s the driving force behind a lot of that,” Whitney Young Local School Council chairperson Brad Vesprini said of Kenner. “So it’s kind of hard to think of it without her, because she’s been such an ingrained part of the institution for so long.”

The task of choosing Whitney Young’s new leader falls to the LSC, which is empowered to form a principal selection committee that can be composed of LSC members and people not on the council. Kenner’s retirement news coincided with the election last week of a new LSC to be seated in July, though the current and incoming councils are nearly identical.

Vesprini said the timeline for the process is still being worked out. It’s an involved undertaking that includes drafting and posting an advertisement for the position; reviewing resumes; interviewing candidates; checking references; holding a candidate forum; selecting finalists and voting to award the contract.

Whitney Young has not gone through this process since summer 1995, when Bill Clinton was serving his first term as president and Michael Jordan was filming the original “Space Jam.” Kenner had been a Whitney Young assistant principal for five years at the time. She took the top job when then-Principal Powhatan Collins accepted a regional CPS role.

The late Collins and the founding Whitney Young principal, the late Bernarr Dawson, were both selected before the election of the first LSCs in 1989. Like Dawson and Collins, Kenner worked elsewhere in CPS before coming to Whitney Young, and like them, Kenner is Black. Kenner said the next principal should be Black as well.

“I’m not saying (this person) has to be Black, but I just think an African-American person is more able right now to deal with the social issues that are impacting our schools and our country and our city,” Kenner said.

According to CPS, at its 500-plus district-run schools, 44% of the principals are Black; 32% are white; about 19% are Hispanic; and 1% are Asian.

Whitney Young’s commitment to ethnic and cultural diversity dates back to its 1975 opening in the Near West Side community. It was among the first CPS schools to employ racial quotas. The student population was initially supposed to be 40% Black, 40% white, 10% Latino, 5% “other” races and 5% the discretion of the principal. The Tribune reported at the time that Whitney Young was trying to set the standard for quality, integrated education.

CPS abandoned the use of racial quotas for admissions to magnet and selective enrollment schools more than a decade ago. This year, of Whitney Young’s 2,100 students, 28% are Hispanic, 25% are white, 22.5% are Asian and nearly 18% are Black.

“These are my babies,” Kenner said. “And I’ll tell them you got a Black mother. I got white kids and Black kids and Asian kids and Latinx kids, and I’m their mother. I just happen to be African-American.”

Kenner is a native of Dayton, Ohio, and a triplet (each triplet has a name that begins with J). She was a cheerleader at Ohio University and taught health and physical education at schools in her home town. After working for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH in Chicago, Kenner joined CPS in 1984 as a job placement coordinator at King High School on the South Side.

She became an assistant principal at Whitney Young in 1990, CPS records show. In discussing her legacy, Kenner points to standout performances by the academic decathlon, basketball, chess, debate, lacrosse, baseball, volleyball and tennis teams.

“Whitney Young has always been an academic, top powerhouse, but I wanted to make sure that we are a powerhouse in everything. I’m very competitive. I like to win. I tell the kids, ‘Look, (even) if we don’t win, we’re going to look good.’ So if you look across the board, even my robotics team looks great. They’ve got T-shirts and jackets,” Kenner said.

“I wanted to be able to take the academics plus extracurricular activities to equal success and build a whole child. That has always been my philosophy and my goal, and I think that we have been able to do that,” she said.

Senior Tova Kaplan, the president of the class of 2022, recalled being drawn to Kenner’s passion and enthusiasm for Whitney Young and its students when she attended an open house for the school as an elementary student.

”One thing I think I really learned with her is that people who are willing to advocate for themselves, that’s kind of how you got stuff done,” said Kaplan, who joined Whitney Young six years ago in the Academic Center for seventh and eighth graders. “You would have to just go down to the office. You’d have to be very proactive about talking to her and the administration.”

Arlyne Chin, president of the Friends of Whitney Young fundraising organization, said she hopes Kenner’s successor follows in her footsteps by emphasizing academic excellence and respect for others.

“These are the things that I think are what makes her a strong principal, also someone who’s willing to make a strong stance and if it’s not the right stance … being able to take a step back and say, either, ‘Hey, I made a mistake,’ or ‘I didn’t understand that,’ or ‘I want to understand that’ and come to the table,” said Chin, a parent of two Whitney Young students.

“There have been many times where there has been maybe conflict in school, or there are policies that are being challenged, and she always welcomes that dialogue with students,” Chin said.

Kenner has weathered her share of controversies over the years. She made headlines a decade ago amid investigations into the admissions practices at prestigious Chicago public high schools. The district revealed it kept a clout list of requests from well-connected individuals trying to get children into elite schools, including Whitney Young.

More recently, the school’s former swim coach was accused of renting out the Whitney Young pool and pocketing about $30,000 in proceeds over three years. The CPS Inspector General’s office determined Kenner “either knew or should have known about the coach’s informal school rental agreements with outside groups.” The Board of Education gave her a five-day, unpaid suspension.

“At the end of the day, I have tried to do the very best job that I can do as one person. And, you know, I have 300 emails a day. And some of it’s junk, but I respond to every single email. It’s just a lot on my plate. And so, should I have known about the swim coach? OK, I get that. But I trusted him to do the right thing,” Kenner said Friday.

She continued: “I trust the people to do the right thing, and I don’t feel like I have to follow up behind everybody. And if I do, then you don’t need to be at Whitney Young, because I don’t have the time to babysit anybody. My focus is getting our kids into the colleges of their choices. We have adults in the building, and I expect them to do adult things.”

In 2020, during the nationwide reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, Kenner found herself the target of an online petition calling for her resignation based on claims that she “silenced student activists speaking against all forms of injustice.”

Kenner said she made the decision to retire about three or four years ago — then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She said she couldn’t leave then, though she called these past three years her “toughest” at the helm of Whitney Young. She said the school was prepared for the switch to remote learning in terms of technology, but not from an emotional standpoint.

“The prom, the graduation, the mental health issues, teachers crying because it just was overwhelming, students crying because they’re in front of a laptop all day long,” Kenner said. “I’m crying because my eyes are hurting. I need to go to the doctor because I can’t see anymore, or my vision is getting worse because I’m on the computer all day long. I would definitely not have ever left (earlier in) the pandemic.”

Kenner has not set a departure date. She said she will stay on until a new principal is selected and will help with the transition. She hopes the process is wrapped up by July 1. Sept. 1 would be her “worst-case scenario.” In retirement, she plans to devote herself to her 3-year-old granddaughter and her grandson on the way.

But before Kenner says goodbye to the top job, she has plenty of extracurriculars to attend — a tradition she hopes the next principal continues.

“I want somebody like me to physically be able to go to not all, but most of the student activities. And I’m tired at the end of every single day because I make myself available to the kids all the time,” Kenner said, noting that she recently spent spring break “in that hot sun” in Florida cheering for the girls softball team. “Honestly, those girls will never forget that their principal came to Florida to see them play.”

tswartz@tribpub.com