Urbana School Board Updates

Our new collaboration with the League of Women Voters and the NAACP of Champaign County is allowing us to share more local government reports and highlights than we have been able to cover in the past. We hope to have a lot more from Urbana government bodies moving forward. Corrie Proksa is the LWV Observer for District 116 Board of Education meetings. These meetings are open to the public and also available on YouTube. From the BoE webpage:

USD116 BOE Meetings are held on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month  (except October, November and March) at 6 p.m. There are no meetings in July. Meetings are held in the Board Room at Tiger Academy, 303 East Fairlawn Dr., Urbana, unless otherwise indicated on the agenda.

There are links to the meeting agendas and minutes on that same webpage. The most recent Observer reports for the beginning of 2025 are available here:

Highlights:

• The 1/7 Board of Education meeting (report, video) included an update on the CU 1to1 mentoring program (jump to video link). There was also an update on technology in the schools (slides, video link) which was followed up by the new year 2025 legislative updates (slides).
  
  
• The 1/21 meeting (report, video) included members Langendorf and Hixson's concerns about a renewed federal push for mass deportation and potential issues with federal agents (jump to video link). Superintendent Ivory-Tatum followed that with some related updates and a brief discussion among board members.
  
  The Student Ambassador report also highlighted quality concerns with Quest Food Management Services, the school lunch provider. Her report also included continued girls bathroom privacy, use, and sink issues. (video jump to link).
  
  There was an overview of the hiring process for middle school leadership positions, along with the introductions and approval of the new hires. There was also an overview of the Vision 2030 initiative (slides, template resolution for school districts, jump to video link).  News-Gazette coverage here.
  
  
• The 2/4 meeting (report, video) included a Student Ambassador report (jump to video link) on new student orientation. The meeting also included an overview of the GEAR UP program (jump to video link on the grant and program) and a discussion about the proposed 2025-2026 calendar. The Board approved the GEAR UP and Vision 2030 resolution discussed at the previous meeting.

2024 Reports:

The District 116 Board of Education Observer Corp reports for October through December 2024 are available here. Highlights:

• The 11/12 meeting (Observer report, video) had the 2023-2024 School Report Card presentation: Observer report, PowerPoint slides, and video jump to link. One of the major points of the presentation is that the district has not bounced back since the pandemic measures in contrast with the rest of the state.
  
  
• The 11/19 meeting (report, slides, and jump to video link) had a presentation about tax revenue and the property tax levy for people interested in the nitty-gritty of that part of the budget. There was also an audit report on the district's financial situation available here.
  
  
• The 12/3 Student Ambassador report raised concerns about privacy in the girls restrooms and concerns about weapons bring brought into the school and whether the metal detectors are effective. There was some additional conversation about this with the Superintendent during that report (Observer report, video jump to link). 
  
  
• The 12/17 meeting included a discussion and vote approving an updated policy on public participation that limited comments to 3 minutes (from 5) and 1 hour total at Board of Education meetings (report, jump to video link). Member Langendorf had an opinion column in the News-Gazette about the public comment and communications policies. There was another opinion piece by a resident opposing the changes here.

More District 116 News:

It's looking like the next school board will begin with a need to fill empty seats immediately after the election due to a lack of candidates for open seats (unlike Unit 4 which has a plethora of candidates running this term). From the News-Gazette:

With four seats about to open up and only one candidate running for election in April, the Urbana school board is gearing up for a challenging start to its next term.

“We would all have to be present in order for us to have a quorum and then for the board to act,” said board President Paul Poulosky. “It’s not a situation we could live with for long.”

Poulosky said the board’s first order of business will almost definitely be to fill those remaining seats as soon as possible.

This isn’t unlike the situation the board was in last year, when all seven seats were open due to redistricting and only six candidates ran for election.

More at the full article here, including some discussion of possibly making changes to the districts and adding at-large seats. The Champaign County Clerk has a list of candidates for local offices, including the Urbana School Board here.

Champaign City Council Updates

Local elections have already begun for 2025. Early voting has started for the consolidated February 25th primary, election, with one contested race for the City Council and township supervisor here. VoteChampaign and the League of Women Voters have a non-partisan candidate guide out for local candidates in the primary race. 

Early voting for the April 1st consolidated general election will begin soon after the primary. There will be another referendum on a property tax increase to fund the low barrier Strides shelter, after the previous referendum failed in November.

City Council Updates:

Recent City Council meetings have spent a lot of time on the fallout from Council member Davion Williams antisemitic comments in December and swastika post on social media in January. More details on that and the response below. The full  2/11 City Council meeting is available here: agenda, video. 

There was a progress report on Council Goals for 2023-2025. It mostly covered outreach on community organizing, gun violence, and a lot of updates on local affordable housing issues. A brief overview of the Council Goals is available on the City website here. The full staff report on the Council Goals Progress Report is available here.

2/4 City of Champaign Township and City Council Meeting

The Township meeting was only a few minutes long. They mayor asked the Township supervisor to address a need by City staff for documentation related to a flex spending account after many failed requests. He agreed to get that documentation to them.

There was a great deal of public comment (jump to video link) related to Council member Davion Williams previous antisemitic statements in December of 2024 and his more recent decision to change his social media profile picture to a swastika and highlighted the religious and cultural use of the symbol prior to that of Nazi Germany.

The News-Gazette highlighted a notable exception to those public comments were the proud parents of recent hire of Valena Greene as "the management analyst for the city’s public works department" announced earlier in the meeting.

Council comments included calls for Davion Williams to resign, echoing many in the public comments. Council member Kathy Shannon noted that the swastika on his social media wasn't just part of a post discussing the history, but that he had made it his profile picture. Every comment that he was making to her and others concerned about his actions was posted with a swastika by it.

The News-Gazette had a series of articles on the fallout after Davion Williams attempted to start a conversation about the cultural history of the swastika symbol, in part by changing his social media profile picture itself into a swastika:

• 2/23: Champaign mayor condemns remarks by council member, public commenter
• 2/24: Champaign council member apologizes for comments at meeting
• 1/31: Champaign council member will not resign, says swastika post was not meant as hate
• 2/4: Williams apologizes for swastika post on his latest statement of apology
• 2/4: Williams apologizes but staying put with coverage on his later statement and his intention not to resign.

The post and his profile picture change has since been deleted, but screenshots taken that morning were shared widely online: 

Davion Williams Post / Profile Change on 1/31/2025

His comments in defense of this post and his previous comments that day were all posted as a swastika:

Davion Williams Comment on 1/31/2025

Many people who aren't Jewish and don't study extremism and antisemitism may be unfamiliar with a lot of antisemitic tropes brought up in his December remarks, but the idea that Jews are secretly controlling our governments and media are certainly the most notorious ones. These were front and center with antisemitic conspiracies like the "Protocols" Hoax, the 1920s Klan, and some of Nazi Germany's most heinous propaganda.

Attempts to normalize the use of the swastika by antisemites will also be familiar to people who face and research antisemitism. This is often explained as doing so on behalf of cultures or religions that are not their own and not done in collaboration with those communities or actual education outreach by them.

It's worth pointing out that the fight against segregation, racism, and bigotry locally has long been a collaboration with many from the local Black community and Jewish community, from the early beginnings of the NAACP branch here through the Civil Rights Movement itself and to this day. Unfortunately, one can find anti-Black racism among some Jewish people and antisemitism among some Black people to this day.

Council Member Davion Williams had a community meeting for District 1 last night (video), but organizers made it clear in the ground rules that no comments about the past would be tolerated, only those looking towards the future and solving problems in District 1. 

The meeting included many updates on local programs available, updates from Champaign Police Chief Tyler, and the City. It focused almost entirely on building collaborations and better communication between those attempting to organize and provide services in the historic Black communities of Champaign's North End within District 1. Many area pastors and local officials attended, including the State's Attorney.

General Housekeeping Update:

Due to illness, I haven't been able to keep the Cheat Sheet up to date as I would have liked over the past few months. But I'm catching up as I can. There should be a flurry of updates on the way through the rest of February as that happens.

The City Website has the meeting minutes and full videos of the meetings that I missed during our downtime. One highlight that we missed at the time was the latest update and staff report on the Community Gun Violence Reduction Blueprint (jump to video link).

Champaign Human Relations Commission Updates

The City of Champaign's Human Relations Commission met this month after cancelations in November, December, and January (agenda, video). This continues a pattern from 2024 where HRC meetings were canceled more often than they were held. Many of the cancellation notices noted a lack of a quorum as the reason last year. The League of Women Voters had an observer at the most recent meeting and filed a report with a meeting overview here. Excerpt:

Discrimination complaints: 3 in October-December. For 2024, there were 11 cases of which 1 was closed, 2 dismissed. There are many reasons for dismissal, which can include the case not reaching the level of discrimination, or a complainant no longer available to respond or dropping the case. 

Police complaints: There were 2 in October for a total of 8 in 2024. 4 have been heard by the Citizen Review Subcommittee. All 2023 cases were heard.

During the audience participation portion of the meeting, two members from a small group of individuals spoke. The group, Northend United, asked for a status update on a concern they raised at the October 2024 meeting. They mentioned that they had emailed the commission during the interim with no response. Since this meeting, the group’s October complaint has been posted as part of the October 2024 minutes. 

That full report is available here. Audience participation (starting at the 14 minute mark in the video) included citizens continuing to raise complaints about the tiny homes "Hope Village" project and the role the Cities of Champaign and Urbana have played in its development. A full copy of their written complaint is available from the HRC's October 2024 meeting minutes here (starting on page 2 of the PDF file). Excerpt:

The News-Gazette had some funding, completion timelines, and other updates on the Hope Village project in November 2024 here, with a more comprehensive overview back in July here.

David Palmer was also voted in as the new secretary for the commission. The HRC's page on the city website has already been updated on this.

Amy H. Contributed to this Cheat Sheet.