We, the undersigned parents, students and community members of John F. Kennedy High School call upon LAUSD leadership to act on the removal of Principal Oscar Vazquez and his administration team. Mr. Oscar Vazquez has repeatedly demonstrated himself incapable of ensuring the safety of our children at John F. Kennedy High School. On an almost daily basis we hear the famous quote, “Student Safety is my number one Priority” yet his inability as a probationary Principal to resolve safety concerns, poor communication, harassment, discrimination, lack of budget transparency, not upholding employee code of ethics and retaliation issues have negatively impacted our school community.

We have asked Community of Schools Administrators, Board members, Operations Administrators, and LAUSD Region North Superintendent to intervene and they have failed to hold Mr. Oscar Vazquez accountable. It is clear that we need new leadership at our school with how destructive this year has been for our children mentally, emotionally, and physically. Sadly, Mr. Oscar Vazquez’s time at Kennedy has been characterized by the following failures, at the expense and safety of our children and staff:

• Retaliation against staff, students, and parents for speaking out on issues.
  • Students are being discriminated against by staff and Mr. Oscar Vazquez turns a blind eye to it and does not uphold policies, procedures and rules.
  • Parents are not being kept informed of safety issues on campus
  • Staff being reassigned with no given explanation
• Lack of providing honest, accurate and timely information.
  • Unreasonable amount of time to respond back to parents' concerns or urgent safety issues.
  • Parents are often handed off to other administrators as Mr. Oscar Vazquez does not want to speak with parents.
  • Phone calls/emails just entirely ignored until escalated above Mr. Oscar Vazquez.
• Misuse of Public Position
  • The school's established Athletic Program has been targeted since day one, 10 Coaches have been removed in the last year
  • Improperly influencing people or giving preferential treatment to specific staff 
• Known animosity between Administration.
  • Mr. Oscar Vazquez has been negatively speaking about his team and undermines them to community representatives on campus.
  • Environment of trust, respect, care and non-discrimination not being made on Kennedy’s campus 
• Lack of transparency on what has been going on at Kennedy
  • Especially when Mr. Oscar Vazquez cannot manage a situation, his go to action is to wait on what Region North tells him to say before parents are made aware. 
• Substandard Leadership on Mr. Oscar Vazquez behalf
  • Frequent hires of staff that are shown to be inappropriate and not properly equipped to be dealing with minors.
  • Violation of student - principal confidentiality, does not keep procurement information confidential
• Weekly investigations causing disruption to the students' learning
  • Students are being pulled into administration offices with doors shut.
  • Multiple parents have had to advise administration to not pull their child in unless parents were notified first, this has been ignored and students are still being interrogated.
• Placement of Admin responsibilities on school Community Rep and Purchase clerks. Parents have been directed to uncredentialed individuals on campus that should not have access to students' information.
  • Information can be misused and hacked
• Inadequate solutions for the increased inappropriate behavior on campus
  • fights on and off campus
  • consistent tagging
  • obvious drug and weapon on campus issue.
  • Intervention assigned and not completed by students
  • Safety Plans created and not put into place, jeopardizing student safety
  • Human Waste found in stairwells
  • Sexual Relationships on campus in unsupervised construction zones
  • Non-school businesses ran on campus 

Unlike Mr. Oscar Vazquez who is the schools primary "safety officer", our students and staff safety is our number one priority. By signing this petition you are helping be a voice for those he has tried to silence. We are advocating for all students and staff. We are strongly urging the decision makers to reassign Mr. Oscar Vazquez at once. We the community stand together to create a voice expressing our willingness to stand together to ask for a change. The need for appropriate interviews to be conducted so a new principal can begin the start of the upcoming school year 2024-2025.
**If you wish to stay in the know or have testimonials to share, please send to demandingchangeatjfkhs@gmail.com.