To submit a letter to the editor, click here.
To pitch a ‘My Turn’ guest column, email jdalessio@news-gazette.com.
Want to purchase today’s print edition? Here’s a map of single-copy locations.
Sign up for our daily newsletter here
CHAMPAIGN — An 11th-hour change of plans: The Champaign school board won’t interview candidates and swear in two new members at Tuesday night’s special meeting, after all.
At the end of the seventh hour of a marathon Monday night meeting that started with three hours of behind-closed-doors executive session and lasted until 12:14 a.m. Tuesday, Amy Armstrong announced that she wouldn’t be participating in tonight's scheduled interviews and would instead defer to Regional Superintendent Gary Lewis to choose new members on the board’s behalf.
Betsy Holder echoed Armstrong’s sentiment, saying she’d also prefer to have Lewis decide, given how "toxic" conditions had gotten in the board room and how the process that led to 11 of 26 applicants being invited to interview (one declined) wasn't inclusive enough.
“Does this mean we’re not having a meeting now?” asked a surprised Heather Vazquez, who’d earlier in the evening been elected vice president in a contentious process and ended the meeting yelling at Holder: “I’m mortified. I’m mortified,” over her decision.
“That’s what it sounds like,” board President Gianina Baker added.
The fireworks started just before midnight, when Armstrong criticized the process that led the list to be whittled down — one that had each of the five sitting board members put forward three applicants’ names.
“I’m looking for an unbiased outside decision maker that doesn’t include this board and does what’s best for the district with the candidates who applied,” Armstrong said.
“I apologize to our community and I apologize to the applicants that expected me to interview tomorrow," Armstrong added. "I never wanted this and I’m sad that I am in this place and we are in this place. I am in an unhealthy environment. ...
“The process should have been inclusive and public with a closed discussion with the full board with all applicants and a ranking system used. We should have had alternative choices in case someone dropped out. I do not trust us to choose what is best because of our dysfunction and unhealthy relationships with each other and the community.”
Before turning to Holder, Baker noted that the process used in this case was similar to the one that led to her own appointment and added: “I am growing quite tired of people dismissing my time.” She was referring to the board’s last scheduled meeting — on March 25 — which was called off after Armstrong and Holder walked out over the vice president vote remaining on the agenda over their objection. They’d argued a vote shouldn't be held until the board was whole again, including the two seats vacated last month by a frustrated Jamar Brown and Mark Thies.
“Member Holder?” Baker said.
“I’m going to echo board member Armstrong and probably not as eloquently. The situation, this board, all this — myself included — it’s toxic. … I don’t think the five of us can come to an agreement that is going to be in the best interest of the district.
“There were a lot of really good candidates; I would say between 10 and 15 people that would be great serving on this board," added Holder, who like Armstrong said she would have preferred a 1-to-10 ranking system of applicants. "But when you find yourself looking at those candidates thinking, ‘Well, who’s going to be on my side? Who’s gonna be this, who’s gonna be that,’ that’s the wrong spirit to go into this.
"That’s the spirit I was looking at it with and it’s time to stop and it’s time to hand it over to the regional superintendent, somebody that is unbiased and can hopefully pick two people to represent the community.”
Baker: "All right. Well, it sounds like those who were trying to become board members, you will not have that opportunity (Tuesday)."
That includes Christy Arnold, the lone applicant who showed up for Monday night's meeting — all seven-plus hours of it.
When it came her time to talk, Vazquez vowed to return tonight, even though there won't be enough members on hand for a quorum.
"I will show up tomorrow night," she said.
"I will as well," Baker added.
When questioned by Holder what the point of that would be, Vazquez spoke about the obligation she made to voters to serve.
"This is real work," Vazquez said. "And the real work is, at minimum, standing here and respecting the candidates, all who applied and were selected to interview, and to say with absolute certainty: 'My sincerest apologies.'
After a pause, Vazquez said, "I'm going to say words I don't mean," then stopped there.
That's when Holder, who came to Monday's meeting wearing a T-shirt with the words "TRANSPARENCY 4 OUR KIDS," began talking again about the process, saying: "There were people that didn't get on that list that should be on that list."
"Because you say so?" fired back Bruce Brown, the lone board member who hadn't yet joined the heated discussion. "We were all given the opportunity to pick our top three, based on the applications."
Holder: "Why's that the process, Bruce? Why's that the process?"
Brown: "That's been the process."
Holder questioned when there had been another time that the board had two open seats at once, and 26 community members apply to fill them, leading to more back and forth between members.
That's when Brown took the microphone and began reading from prepared remarks. He didn't hold back.
"I was actually going to hold my comments because it's 12 o'clock," he began, adding that he had something to say and was going to say every word of it.
"The sky has not fallen. Much of the issues this community seems to be in an uproar about is mere gaslighting, from an abhorrent, year-long fault-finding campaign that has yet to produce any material impropriety. Yes, we know that some Is need to be dotted, some Ts need to be crossed. But nothing material in all this time.
"The community talks about trust and transparency. But guess what? In order for there to be trust and transparency, there has to be some truth. So let me share some with you," he said before beginning a lengthy speech that appeared to address, among other things, the months of speculation about administrative upheaval at Booker T. Washington Elementary, which dominated public comment again Monday.
"There's a community outcry for transparency. ... Sharing too many details (about personnel issues) undermines not only the process but also opportunities for restorative relationships to take place. ...
"Community conjecture: To simply acknowledge that you don't have all the information that we're using to make decisions — and then to go on in the same breath or in the next sentence to formulate such strong opinions about what should be done and how things look and all the other conclusions about what's going on, actually, that's not how counterargument works. I teach my kids how to do it. You actually have to disprove, you can't just acknowledge.
"It's all the same if someone trying to protect their position begins spreading a narrative that vilifies their supervisor to garner public support, yet we, the board, have ample documentation of malfeasance to justify firing that individual. We're going to act on the information we have, not the verdict of the court of public opinion, even if it's cued from members of this table. There's more at stake than just appeasing the loudest voices in the room. Because of its nature, personnel issues are handled internally. ...
"There's been a lot of talk tonight, good talk, about going back to our resolution and racism being a public health crisis. A lot of talk about equity and inclusion. Ultimately, the residue of systemic racism being addressed in our curriculum. But we've never had the discussion to how it might affect our processes. And it would appear we're seeing the signals from that public health crisis play out.
"All of a sudden, longstanding practices and procedures, whether written or not, were allowable, unquestioned, accepted without question from the community or otherwise, but now everything is under question. Everything. Not from a place of inquiry or general clarification but from an accusatory assumption of bad faith, as if two highly educated leaders" — presumably referring to Baker and Superintendent Shelia Boozer — "are going to intentionally jeopardize their years of hard work and progress to lie to a public about things readily verifiable. ...
"Are you telling me that one board member's opinion should supersede that of the entire board who speaks and affirms all action through a majority vote? That sounds like privilege; that sounds like entitlement to me. I was ready to allow this to sit and not say (anything). But I don't know when we're going to have another opportunity to speak about what's going on.
"I teach my students in my CRT class that just because somebody does something that is racist ... doesn't automatically make them a racist. If someone commits an act that's rooted in racism and someone else points it out and explains to that person the connection, it's not the act but rather the response. Whether that individual stops, considers, redirects themselves — or, if they double down in defense of the act, that is what establishes someone as a racist. ... What are we supposed to do with the coincidences that, all of the sudden, now that the (board) leadership has changed and doesn't look the same now, the sky is absolutely falling?
"You may not see it that way but these are textbook techniques and strategies used against Black men, women, people of color in power when the status quo is disrupted.
"My appeal was going to be for us to take a hard pause, to drop the combativeness and operate from a place of good faith. To ask that we give time — you know, maybe 48 hours — for the appropriate people to respond to our questions before going to social media to air perceived slights. I was going to ask that we put our claws up and return to some semblance of civility — and return to student-based, solution-focused effort. For about two hours, we were there. It actually felt like any other I've been on the board — actually looking at curriculum, looking at things that actually matter when it comes to achievement for our kids.
"And I thought, you know, this is a little too heavy to be laying out at midnight. But you all have shown me otherwise. I was gonna say to the potential new members tomorrow: 'You have an option to be part of the problem or part of the solution.' I pray you would have chosen the second but you won't get that opportunity. ... To be robbed of the opportunity to move forward ... that sucks.
"I'm done. I am disgusted at how things have turned out because people can't get their way."
Brown didn't name names but Holder took the words personally, saying: "I’m tired of being called a racist because I don’t agree with people."
