Phyllis Goolsby, a longtime educator in Chatham, is being remembered by co-workers, families and former students after her death in Washington Heights.
CHICAGO, Ill. — A South Side school community is grieving the loss of Phyllis Goolsby, a longtime preschool teacher who was shot to death March 7 inside a home in Chicago’s Washington Heights neighborhood, days after classes ended with what turned out to be her last goodbye to co-workers.
Goolsby, 68, taught four-year-olds at Raekwon’s Scholastic Academy in Chatham and had worked there since 2011. Police said she was killed along with 71-year-old Tuanna Thomas in a shooting late that Saturday night in the 10400 block of South Peoria Street. A 75-year-old man, William Wallace Jr., was later charged with two counts of first-degree murder. For the school where Goolsby spent more than a decade, the case has become more than a homicide investigation. It is now a painful loss felt in classrooms, hallways and among families who knew her as a steady presence in their children’s earliest school years.
At Raekwon’s Scholastic Academy, the grief has settled in slowly but heavily. The school at 211 W. 79th St. had opened with Goolsby on staff in 2011, according to people who worked with her, and she stayed long after she first talked about retiring. Raekwon Neighbors, who said he worked beside her for more than a decade, remembered a teacher who kept postponing retirement because she did not want to leave the children. “I just love the kids. I’m just going to be here for the kids,” Neighbors recalled her saying, describing a pattern in which she would plan to step away and then return to the same answer. He said two former students had recently come back to visit, one 8 and one 13, and Goolsby hugged them with tears in her eyes. For those around her, that scene captured the way she taught: with warmth, memory and attachment that lasted beyond one school year.
Neighbors said the shock deepened because the loss came so suddenly. The last time he saw Goolsby, he said, was when she left work the Friday before the shooting. “I didn’t know that was the last time I was going to see her,” he said. He described her not simply as an employee, but as someone who felt like an aunt to him and others connected to the school. In another memory, he said Goolsby gave members of the Neighbors family the same playful line, telling each one they were her favorite. He kept a photo from her 68th birthday near his keyboard, he said, and told her she was his favorite, too. Those small details, shared in the days after her death, have helped define how she is being remembered: not by a single public role, but by a string of personal moments that made colleagues and parents feel they belonged around her.
The violence that ended Goolsby’s life also took the life of her sister, Tuanna Thomas. Chicago police said officers were called about 10:50 p.m. March 7 to the South Peoria address and found both women shot in the chest. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities said a weapon was recovered, and William Wallace Jr. was taken into custody less than 20 minutes later in the same block. By Tuesday, police had announced two first-degree murder charges. Prosecutors later said Wallace was Goolsby’s boyfriend of 25 years and alleged he admitted to the killings. A judge ordered him held in jail, and his next court date was set for March 25. Police have released few public details about what led up to the shooting inside the home, leaving some family and community questions unanswered even as the court case moves ahead.
For the families who passed through Goolsby’s classroom, her death has reopened a different kind of record — the living memory of early childhood. Co-workers said she taught children at a formative age, when a teacher often becomes one of the first adults outside the home to shape how a child feels about school. Former students and parents are expected to come to Chicago from around the country for memorial services planned for April 3 and 4. That response speaks to the long reach of her work. Preschool teaching rarely brings public notice, but it often leaves a deep mark in private family history. In this case, the mourning has spread beyond one neighborhood, linking Washington Heights, where the shooting happened, with Chatham, where her daily work gave her a wider circle of people who now feel her absence.
Inside the school community, the stories people tell about Goolsby are not dramatic ones. They are ordinary stories of someone arriving ready to work, staying longer than planned and giving children a level of care that made parents remember her years later. That is part of why the loss has hit so hard. It interrupted a familiar routine and replaced it with police updates, court records and funeral plans. The emotional contrast has been especially sharp for people who knew her in the classroom, where the work centered on songs, lessons, hugs and repetition. In the days since the shooting, those who knew her have spoken in simple terms about love, loyalty and disbelief. Their recollections have turned her public identity from victim to teacher again, even as the criminal case continues to unfold.
Goolsby’s co-workers are now looking ahead to memorial services in early April while the murder case against Wallace continues in Cook County court. For the moment, the school she helped build is left mourning a teacher whose final lesson, for many who knew her, is the measure of how deeply one educator can matter.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.