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Democracy in Action at Champaign Unit 4 School Board Meeting |
Current rating: 0 |
by Brenda Koenig
Email: bakoenig (nospam) sbcglobal.net (unverified!) |
12 Apr 2006
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On Monday evening, April 10th, on a lark, I turned on the community access TV channel, which for me, like for many folks, is sadly too often one more channel to click over in futile pursuit of substantial entertainment. There, in front of a jerky camera, an African American woman was making an impassioned plea to the Unit 4 School Board to withdraw their proposal to hire armed police officers to patrol inside our community’s schools. I listened for a few moments, and then reached for my jacket and car keys, hoping that by the time I drove the ten blocks down to the Mellon building, she would still be standing behind the podium and it wouldn’t be too late to show some sign of support. |
On Monday evening, April 10th, on a lark, I turned on the community access TV channel, which for me, like for many folks, is sadly too often one more channel to click over in futile pursuit of substantial entertainment. There, in front of a jerky camera, an African American woman was making an impassioned plea to the Unit 4 School Board to withdraw their proposal to hire armed police officers to patrol inside our community’s schools. I listened for a few moments, and then reached for my jacket and car keys, hoping that by the time I drove the ten blocks down to the Mellon building, she would still be standing behind the podium and it wouldn’t be too late to show some sign of support. I told my husband that it was something I had to do, because I was convinced she was there, alone, in her attempt to sway a formidable and unyielding wall of bureaucrats and administrators.
I was wrong. She wasn’t alone. Speaker after speaker, both black and white, stood up and made eloquent and emotional speeches that spoke to our community’s need to devise complex solutions for complex problems instead of resorting to the easy threat of force. They spoke of how we need to use our financial resources towards hiring more social workers, psychologists, support staff, and supporting teacher education and training as opposed to hiring police officers with weapons (and, to be accurate, it was the guns that were the issue here, not necessarily the presence of the police themselves). They spoke of implementing a peaceful schools initiative instead of resorting to intimidation. They spoke of using our resources to wrap around problem children, to try to reach them and let them know that they are valued and can lead empowered and meaningful lives. And the list went on and on…even those who stood in support of hiring police officers wanted some guarantee that the administration had a larger, more comprehensive discipline plan that, and here is the important part, would give the community a voice in the process.
And then I was wrong again. The wall of administrators wasn’t so solid after all…in fact it began to break apart. A ripple of surprise and anticipation swept through the audience. School board members disagreed. Those who were expected to vote yes came out against the measure (and vice versa!); in fact, and if I hadn’t been there I would have never believed it, school board members were actually saying that they couldn’t support something that so clearly needed “more community input”. Then, the final blow: Superintendent Culver looked out at the audience and said something along the lines of: It is clear that this is not what the community wants. More discussion won’t change that. I will not recommend the use of school resource officers. Period.
Say what you want about political maneuvering and self-interested bureaucrats. Say that next month the room could be packed with the pro-police constituency. That's fine and good. What I witnessed Monday night was democracy in action pure and simple. People showed up and their voices mattered. I can’t imagine any TV program could have been as deeply satisfying as that. |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
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Don't Count the Conservative Elites Out Yet |
by historian
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Apr 2006
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Don't forget that Superintendent Culver was hired out of Tom Delay's hometown, Sugarland, Texas. Like other elitist conservatives, he is unlikley to rest until he has democracy under his control again...short of being forced from office by the odiousness of his actions
In fact, tonight's News-Gazette has a front page story about Culver resurrecting the police in schools plan he declared dead at Monday night's meeting. Like Tom Delay, he's always got some excuse to cram down the throats of the community something it clearly doesn't want and of which little evidence was shown for any need to patrol the schools with armed guards.
Hasn't Culver ever heard that the police tend to show up right away if you ever really need them if you dial 911?
The only reason I can see for having cops in schools is to extend the extensive, ominous and threatening presence of official violence from certain, selected parts of the community into all of our schools. |
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Re: where does it end? |
by kevin
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Apr 2006
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Well, if we can't force companies to pay a decent wage so that people can more readily work their way out of poverty and dysfunction... and if we can't be more supportive of families (neither the Left nor the Right has a good record on this issue) then it never "ends".
If we're forced into survival mode, then let's do it humanely, with counelors, rather than with cops and the biggest prison system in the developed world. |
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Democracy is so inconvenient for those in power |
by lifelong learner
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Apr 2006
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> In fact, tonight's News-Gazette has a front page story about Culver resurrecting the police in schools plan he declared dead at Monday night's meeting.
AM 580 is reporting that the issue is going to be brought up again, at special meeting this coming Monday. The quote from asst superintendent Ecomet Burley is:
"To continue to talk about it and go back and bring it up and that kind of thing was not a real judicious move ... knowing that we have provided forums for this to be talked about."
Given that there's going to be a special meeting on Monday to talk about it further, I'm left wondering exactly who gets to talk about this and who is supposed to keep their mouths shut, according to Mr. Burley.
For more on Mr. Burley's educational philosophy see
http://www.champaignschools.org/index2.php?header=./&file=admin |
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Re: Democracy in Action at Champaign Unit 4 School Board Meeting |
by teacher
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Apr 2006
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Why is it not reasonable to want security in schools. Times have changed. Much of the violence in schools comes in from the community. Champaign teachers and parents want the same security that Urbana and other schools have. I agree with Koenig about democracy in action last Monday, but I also believe that the opposing view deserves equal time. |
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Re: Democracy in Action at Champaign Unit 4 School Board Meeting |
by jenny
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Apr 2006
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Thanks so much for sharing -- very empowering, very well-written |
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Re: teacher |
by kevin (also a teacher, by the way)
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Apr 2006
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You have a good point here. What do the teachers, staff, students, and parents at these schools have to say?
We should be a bit leary of administrators and community activists battling is out to decide this issue. Neither group has to deal with life in school on a day to day basis (even though they're all quite certain they have the answers!) |
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Re: Democracy in Action at Champaign Unit 4 School Board Meeting |
by Ricky Baldwin
baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
20 Apr 2006
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Thanks, Brenda, for writing this. Very well done. Very exciting, too - as you say, whatever happens afterwards - it shows us the way we need to operate always: with vigilance and participation.
Of course it is true, as some have said, that safety is important, especially in schools. It's just not clear that the way to help is to have armed police standing by (maybe next generation in Ninja Turtle riot gear?). This is a bigger societal problem, and there's no amount of groaning and eye-rolling that's going to change that. Schools are part of our communities, and what problems our communities have, our schools will have. No matter how much denial we fund.
Times have changed, yes, mostly for the better. The moral climate in the US has improved dramatically since the 1950s. We care, publicaly, about so many things now that past generations never gave a thought, or did so in much smaller groups. Still, many of us believe, and really believe, that our society is more violent than it was this time 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, but it ain't so. At least two things happened that make us believe it:
(1) national crime reporting was modernized in the 1950s thru 70s, so police departments began reporting and keeping track of incidents that previously went unrecorded - so it APPEARED that crime rates jumped. They did not. The FBI's crime victimization survey, conducted regularly throughout the period, showed relatively steady rates of violent crime. Of course at the sam etime the FBI was coming into its own and their PR department was working overtime producing comic books, crime shows, etc, to increase fear of crime - and police departments learned how to do that, too - as a means of gaining increased funding for new technology that was becoming available, etc. That still goes on.
(2) Let's be honest. One of the biggest social and cultural changes that actually did occur during the time that society's morals are often alleged to have begun to decline (not for the first time, as you can read in the bitter sermons to that effect after the Civil War, and before) was desegregation. It was violent at times, as at my alma mater, The University of Mississippi and elsewhere. White flight began immediately to the suburbs, and many white parents yanked their kids out of public schools altogether. The direct results were a decline in white support for funding public schools and all the other care that is needed to maintain good community schools. To be fair, part of what was happening, and still is, is that some parents and kids were seeing for the first time the social ills that often go along with poverty and other forms of exclusion - particularly violence and disinterest in learning, resentment, etc. Not that all black people are or were poor, or that all poor people are violent, or that white people never suffered these same things. Well I remember my older relatives telling me when I was a kid about seeing a man stabbed in a barn (when my uncle was about 6) or my grandmother's uncle whosw head was split open in a ahradware store when she was a kid, or other tales of white poverty and brutal violence.
But they hit the black community hardest, because of racism and the legacy of slavery. We know this. What we often don't acknowledge is that these effects of exclusion are still with us, with us all, and there is no way under the sun that any of us - of any color - can ultimately escape this problem, not by any amount of hiding our heads in the suburban sands, private schools, gated communities, police crackdowns in the public spaces to drive the rabble back into "their" quarters, etc.
Time to deal with the problem head on. Our society is deeply divided. Many people, black, white, brown, red, however we want to think of ourselves, are not enjoying equal access to our modern wealth and comfort. The result is not rocket science and it doesn't take "eggheads" to explain it: there will never be peace until there is justice. An injury to one is an injury to all. |
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No Proof of Need |
by historian
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Apr 2006
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The most disturbing thing about Art Culver's emotional shell game is that it was long on emotion and short on facts. Depsite all the handwringing about safety in the schools, there has been no proof that Champaign schools are any more violent than any other schools nor that putting armed police in schools fulltimeactually makes any difference.
If anything, the national trends in violence among youth are actually falling. There is no proof that the Champaigm schools are somehow an exception to this rule. In the meantime, here's a citation about the overall downward trends in violence among youth.
From:
http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/71ViolentVictimization.cfm
"Violent crime victimization among adolescents has declined by more than half since the early 1990s. Between 1994 and 2004, the victimization rate declined for adolescents ages 12 to 15 from 118.6 per 1,000 to 49.7 per 1,000. For youth ages 16 to 19, the rate declined from 123.9 per 1,000 to 45.9 per 1,000."
If somehow the Champaign schools are an exception to this national trend, then it may be time to examine Culver's failing management of the schools, rather than introduce armed guards into an academic setting. |
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p.s. |
by Ricky Baldwin
baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
21 Apr 2006
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Excellent contribution, historian.
Two other important – related - factors I should have mentioned in the *perception* that society is in decay: One could be called (2a), as it relates directly to racism, and it involves an exaggerated perception of crime. Crimes by people of color are often perceived as more severe than the same crimes committed by whites, particularly if the crimes in question are perpetrated against whites instead of against other people of color – which could become more frequent with increased contact resulting from desegregation. I’m not sure that this has happened, but the perception that it has is enough to increase fear of crime (and reporting of crime by police and media, which in turn increases fear of it).
Another, similar, factor could be called (1a), and it relates the moral improvement that has occurred in the US over the past 50 years or so. Some activities not previously considered crimes, or taken seriously as crimes -- rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment -- are now required to be reported and investigated in ways they were not prior to the so-called second wave of feminism in the 1970s (and incidentally, before the Civil Rights Movement). This also relates to 2a, unfortunately, because the prevalence of racism in the US means that even improvements of this sort will be misused. As we know here in C-U a white police officer accused of rape, with evidence, is still not treated as harshly as a black activist accused of sexual assault, with little or no evidence.
Complex problems of this kind can only be solved by a comprehensive approach to community health, not by bandaids that barely treat the symptoms, or even exacerbate the problems. |
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Re: Democracy in Action at Champaign Unit 4 School Board Meeting |
by admirer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Apr 2006
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The March of Devoted Educators
It’s been for a while running,
And we‘ve just resolved a dilemma
That students without money
Shouldn’t get high school diplomas.
The meaning of this discovery
One couldn’t overestimate:
This free education in country
Wastes government’s money in vain.
But, as in this democratic country,
Equality’s our favorite tune,
Those, who’re enlisted in army,
Could be exceptions from rules.
Hence poor students in army,
In order to survive combat,
Should treasure own lives some way
Above the desire to be smart.
Thus steadily without destruction
We would achieve our goal,
Which as our Affirmative Actions
Should be admired by world! |
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