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Ravenswood Principal Resigns Amid 'Stress, Turmoil' At CPS

(CBS) – The principal of a North Side elementary school is resigning and tells parents stress and turmoil at Chicago Public Schools as part of the reason.

CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker reports.

Ravenswood Elementary is closed for the summer, but when it opens this fall the principal who has headed the school for the last five years will be gone. Heather Connolly quit Thursday.

"I came across a good position and saw that it seemed like a good fit," she said in a telephone interview Friday.

Connolly explains that's she's taking an administrative position in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.

But she also wrote that in a letter to community there were other reasons, such as "the stress of the constant turmoil that has plagued Chicago Public Schools."

Pressed for more detail, the former principal said: "When you lose funding it's never an easy thing."

Ravenswood's school budget was cut $128,000 this year. In another letter to the community, Connolly wrote, "This loss is more difficult because of the loss of two teaching positions."

Wendy Vasquez is the president of the Friends of Ravenswood, a community organization that raises money for the school. She says Connolly is credited for managing to produce an academically strong school, despite the cuts.

But the loss of the principal should send a message to CPS that even the best can only take so much stress, she says.

"We are at that point where if you want the city to continue to grow and thrive you have to figure out a way to make it attractive to people and more attractive than other options," Vasquez says.

Connolly's departure was reported earlier at the DNAinfo.com website.

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