Keith Foley Steps Down as Lane Tech Principal

September 7, 2006

By: Neil Hernandez

In an announcement that surprised the Lane community, Keith Foley decided to step down as the principal for Lane Tech and  accepted a new role at Marshall High School of the Chicago Public Schools. Foley became principal at Lane in 1999 and served as an assistant principal at Lane for a decade before that. Former Assistant Principal Antoinette Lo Bosco is now the new principal at Lane Tech.

Student/Lane advocate

Foley was very popular with both the students and the administration alike at Lane. The general consensus was that Foley firmly believed in having an environment friendly for students. He was great proponent for removing the boulders that used to lay on the Lane Tech landscape. The boulders were set there to prevent excessive usage of the Lane Tech lawn. But they had a detrimental effect to student morale in that the boulders symbolized administration’s blockage of student freedom. Foley also believed in the students having more access to Lane’s courtyard and garden located in the center of the school.

Foley, a 1965 Lane Tech grad and played football at the University of Illinois was also a strong supporter for upgrading the athletic facilities at Lane Tech. In a September 11, 2005 article written in the Sun-Times Keith Foley stated about Lane stadium: “The stadium has had no serious attention since the early 1960’s when I played there…benches are rotten, concrete is falling, and toilets won’t flush. This isn’t vandalism, it’s age. Lane should be a show case, a place that people want to come to. And it isn’t…Illinois ranks 49^th among 50 states in providing aid for education. For the politicians not to allocate money for the largest high school in the city is disgraceful.”

Some controversy

But Foley’s tenure at Lane has not always been rosy. Personally, Foley was a known evangelical Christian and believer in teen abstinence. Earlier this year he received criticism for allowing Seven Project, who the Sun-Times called a ministry of the Assemblies of the God, an evangelical Christian denomination, to hold two 50-minute school wide assemblies at the school. There were some concerns about the separation between church and state. However, a Chicago Board of Education investigation came with the conclusion that Keith Foley did not cross the line between church and state. According to a Sun-Times article, Board of Education general counsel Patrick Rocks said “the allegation that the assemblies was faith based was unfounded. We don’t believe there was any wrong doing.”

New Role at Marshall High School

Foley will take on a very important role at Marshall High School. Foley is one of four principals to take advantage of the Chicago Public Schools effort to improve their school by giving financial incentives. The program invites principals from schools that traditionally have high test scores to schools that need improvement in that arena. Also taking advantage of this new program is Adrian Willis of Mount Greenwood's Keller Gifted Magnet, the seventh-highest-scoring elementary school in the state. Willis will take on the role as principal at Englewood's Earle School, where only 13 percent of third-graders passed state reading tests in 2005.

In his new role at Marshall, Foley will “mentor” the new principal and receive a $137,000 salary, $10,000 sign-in bonus, and an additional $2,000 for each target Marshall hits based on ACT scores, state test scores, course pass rates and attendance. Marshall is school in desperate need for quality leadership. Only 15% of it’s students pass state reading test where as 85% pass at Lane. The challenges at Marshall are truly going to be different but Foley said the idea of helping a school like Marshall is appealing to him. So Foley has a big job ahead of him at Marshall but will be surely missed at Lane.