| Administrative hearing of William McAndrew | |
|---|---|
 McAndrew (pictured at far-left) testifying at a session of the administrative hearing in early October 1927 | |
| Court | Chicago Board of Education (administrative hearing venue) |
| Started | September 29, 1927 |
| Decided | March 21, 1928 |
| Verdict | Guilty |
| Case history | |
| Appealed to | Superior Court of Cook County |
| Subsequent action | Voided |
On August 29, 1927, William McAndrew was suspended from his position as superintendent of Chicago Public Schools by the Chicago Board of Education pending an administrative hearing by the board. He was charged with "insubordination" for opposing a school board action that he believed would amount to reviving patronage in the school system. The administrative hearing, which was widely dubbed a "trial", was to determine whether he was guilty, and should therefore be removed from his office. The administrative hearing, which attracted great national media fascination and derision, took place over the course of several months, and saw McAndrew tried for counts of insubordination, and an additional count of conduct incompatible with and in violation of his duty (stemming from allegations of unpatriotic actions). The hearing was effectively a show trial. After the first several weeks of the hearing, McAndrew and his legal team refused to attend any further sessions and he was tried in absentia. The school board found McAndrew guilty by an 8–2 vote on March 21, 1928. In December 1929, the Superior Court of Cook County voided this, ruling that McAndrew had not been insubordinate, and that the school board had no authority to charge McAndrew for being "unpatriotic".
The administrative hearing came following a reshaping of the board of education with appointments made by William Hale Thompson in the months after he took office in 1927. During his successful campaign against then-incumbent mayor William Emmett Dever in the 1927 Chicago mayoral election, Thompson had promised to oust McAndrew. During the campaign, Thompson had made regular allegations that McAndrew was a British agent sent by King George as part of a grand conspiracy to manipulate the minds of American children and set the groundwork for the United Kingdom to repossess the United States, with Dever being in on this alleged plot. Thompson's allegations came amid a national wave of anglophobic attacks on textbooks. After Thompson was elected mayor, he sought to quickly oust McAndrew, who had nine months left before his contract as superintendent expired. State law stated that the Chicago Board of Education could only dismiss McAndrew after an administrative hearing before the board.