The biggest news out of Unit 4 this past month were the proposals to drastically reorganize the school district away from the current "School of Choice" system. The proposals were introduced during a presentation by a consulting firm known as Cooperative Strategies at the 9/26 school board meeting. The next school board meeting is tomorrow October 10th and is likely to have many people organizing before the meeting, attending the meeting and participating in public comments towards the end (links for meeting agenda, information, and public comment rules).
For folks interested in seeing the 9/26 proposals presentation for themselves it starts just after the 2 hour, 1 minute mark in this school board meeting video on the Unit 4 website. The PDF presentation is available here. The school board meeting agendas and documents are available here.
The News-Gazette had initial coverage of the announcement, presentation, various players, and reactions in their 9/30 "Meeting Minutes" feature. A few excerpts:
You’ll likely be hearing and reading the acronym SES frequently in the coming weeks. “That is ‘socio-economic status,’” board member Kathy Shannon spelled out at this week’s meeting, and it’s severely out of whack between the neighborhoods of elementary schools on the high end of the spectrum (Carrie Busey and Barkstall) and the low end (Booker T. Washington, Garden Hills, Stratton). “We as a community, I think, I hope ... we know that it’s really important that we don’t have schools full of rich kids and schools full of poor kids,” Shannon said....
This is just a report, this is an initial step presented to the board,” President Amy Armstrong emphasized to those anxious parents watching Monday’s meeting — most of them on Tuesday after streaming issues prevented the meeting from being broadcast live on Unit 4’s website. “And the community steps into the next part of the process.”
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The project website that houses the aforementioned survey is also home to a handy school-locator tool, where users can type in their address and see which cluster they’d fall into if this option is adopted.
A lot more information at the full article available on the News-Gazette website here. There were additional articles on the reaction by the community here. One organized group mentioned in that article, Unit 4 Families for Smarter Solutions, is pushing for alternative policy proposals and has already had its own public meeting towards that goal. Video of latest community meeting here (PowerPoint presentation available here). People didn't appear to be coalescing around any particular alternate proposal at this initial meeting. Many different perspectives were shared on the history of school segregation here, multilingual needs of the community, and criticisms of how focused the Cooperative Strategies proposals actually address any of the problems they're focused on.
More details on the focus groups arranged for further community input to the Cooperative Strategies firm. Links to the survey and focus group application are available on their website here.
More coverage:
- WCIA initial proposal coverage here. Latest reaction coverage here, including yesterday's community meeting and an interview with NAACP president Minnie Pearson who attended and spoke at that meeting. Additional recent Unit 4 articles here.
- Illinois Newsroom 10/4: "Families weigh desegregation benefits, familiarity as Unit 4 discusses abandoning its school choice system"
- Reaction news segments from WAND and WCCU.
For more background on Unit 4's previous attempts at dealing with racial and socioeconomic disparities, local segregation, and integration of schools there is a lot of territory to cover. The most recent and helpful overviews to get started may be the district's recent Needs Assessment (February 2020) and Strategic Plan (September 2020).
- The Needs Assessment was developed by another education consulting firm called FourPoint Education Partners and is available on the Champaign Board of Education's website here. This also relates to the board's declaration of racism as a health crisis in June 2020.
- The Strategic Plan for the district was developed based on that assessment.
- A 2019 Cheat Sheet post on segregation in Champaign-Urbana highlighting excerpts of a Governing Magazine series looking at modern segregation in downstate Illinois, including towns like ours.
- WILL coverage of the local branches of the NAACP and ACLU 2019 letter explaining ongoing concerns about racial disparities in outcomes, opportunities, and treatment in Unit 4. The full letter is still available on the Champaign County ACLU's website here.
- A critical look at the aftermath of the Consent Decree and settlement from a former Unit 4 teacher and administrator in 2012. It was republished on a searchable local Unit 4 blog that covered Unit 4 from late 2008 through 2020.
- The News-Gazette had a very brief overview of the extent of school segregation here during the racial Nadir and desegregation attempts after World War II and then the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s.
For legal wonks here is the text of the 2009 Settlement Agreement that helped usher in the end of the Consent Decree and the 2002 Consent Decree ruling itself. There are also records available through the University on the history of the legal battle that led to the Consent Decree.
The long history of integration and segregation in Champaign-Urbana is difficult to summarize. In some ways we were unique and different from other Northern towns... but in other ways we were tragically typical. I strongly recommend folks take advantage of our great African-American history resources and archives locally to learn more about the evolution, changes (forwards and backwards), and the backlashes that occurred both nationally and locally over the past generations here.
Other Unit 4 Updates:
- CU One-to-One mentoring training dates and coverage from WCCU.
- The News-Gazette had coverage of the Superintendent's pay raise and overview of the previous school board meeting. Other approved items including the sale of excess Chromebooks to other districts and the donation of other surplus supplies.
- The 9/16 "Meeting Minutes" feature noted some approved district hires and "a moment of silence for Central coaching icon Lee Cabutti."
- The latest updates on the tentative SY 2022-2023 budget is available from the last meeting agenda packet here.
- Area superintendents (including for Champaign schools) had a public event on area school needs covered by WAND here.
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