It is now official. Joshua Dakins, the principal at George Washington Middle School, won’t be back next year. On March 26 the Lyons School District 103 Board of Education approved Dakin’s resignation. The Landmark had reported in late February that Dakins was resigning. Dakins will continue to serve as principal and Director of Safety through the end of the school year.
In a telephone interview with the Landmark after the school board accepted his resignation Dakins said he did not yet have another job but he felt compelled to resign because he felt that his work was not being supported by District 103 Superintendent Kristopher Rivera.
“I’m not leaving because I wanted to leave, I’m leaving because I didn’t really feel I had any better choice,” Dakins said. “I just felt that the personal toll that it was taking on my health and on my family, that I didn’t have the support needed to continue to do the work that needed to be done there.”
Dakins, who is in his second year as principal at GWMS, said he felt Rivera’s attitude toward him change last fall.
Dakins said he didn’t feel supported in his work to change the culture at GWMS and improve academic performance.
Dakins said he was given a proficient rating, a mid-level rating, in his last evaluation but didn’t know if his contract would have been renewed had he not resigned.
“I can’t answer that question. I hope that I would have been renewed,” Dakins said.
Rivera did not respond to a request for comment about Dakin’s resignation from the Landmark.
Dakins said his job was made more difficult because the district’s Director of English Language Services, Guadalupe Vander Ploeg, only works onsite one week a month. Vander Ploeg works the rest of the time from her home in Texas.
“There were things that were brought up that should have been caught by that person and blame thrown my way for it and I was not going to be fired by this superintendent,” Dakins said.
Dakins said he believes the district’s administrator for non-native English speaking students needs to be onsite.
Test results at GWMS have been very low for years. It is classified as a targeted school by the Illinois State Board of Education which means that it is in the lowest grouping of schools. Last year only 15 percent of GWMS students met or exceeded the state standards in English/Language Arts while just 10 percent did so in math. Those results were actually a slight improvement over the 2021-22 school year.
Dakins said he was trying to change the culture at the school and improve academic performance.
“I think that with the staff I was bringing, the direction that we were moving, given two or three more years, we absolutely would have been in a really good place,” Dakins said. “I just feel bad, mostly for the students and the parents who want nothing but the best for their kids.”
Dakins said his relationship with teachers did not influence his decision to quit.
“Nothing about the teachers, nothing about the students, absolutely nothing about the parents, as a whole, influenced my decision,” Dakins said.
But a number of teachers did not think highly of Dakins.
“In my opinion he has made poor staffing decisions that have impacted good teachers and thereby the students in not so great ways, at a time when finding and keeping good teachers is a challenge,” said veteran GWMS science teacher Toni Jackman, who is retiring at the end of this school year, in a text message.
Another teacher at GWMS, who asked not to be identified because she feared retaliation from Dakins, said most teachers at GWMS did not like him.
“The majority of teachers that I know, actually all of the teachers that I know, do not care for him, do not care for his leadership style, are disappointed in the processes that he’s made and that he has not followed through on, disappointed with the structure of the school and the discipline policy which are basically nonexistent,” the teacher said.
The teacher also said Dakins does not deal well with strong women.
“I find that Josh tends to undermine women in a huge way,” the teacher told the Landmark. “I think he feels threatened by strong women. In fact, I know he does. I’m a strong woman and I know he felt threatened by me.”
No principal has stayed at GWMS for more than four years since it became a middle school in 2000. Dakins said the constant turnover is not good for the school and points to larger problems within the district.
“I think the history there speaks for itself,” Dakins said. “How many administrators are they going to go through before they realize it’s not a building level issue. But when you continue to make excuses as to why the building person is not the right fit you have to look elsewhere and say where are the problems.”