Eighteen months ago, when Becky Deutschman and Debbie Klimek initiated the fight to send their children to Lincoln-Way High School instead of Joliet Central, they needed only to prove that they had the legal right to do so.
But now, the Jackson Township women, and 132 of their neighbors, find themselves in the position of proving they are not racists–or at least that their intentions are not racially motivated.
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The group is trying to detach their neighborhood from Joliet Township High School District 204 and Joliet Central, which has a minority enrollment of about 52 percent, and into Lincoln-Way High School District 210, which is about one percent minority.
During recent State Board of Education hearings, witnesses–some of whom were experts paid by the Joliet school district–testified that the parents want to transfer because they don’t want their kids attending a school with a predominantly minority enrollment. Earlier this week, one witness testified that Klimek admitted as much and had used racial epithets about African-Americans. Klimek has denied those allegations.
“We are appalled and ashamed that the school district would use this tactic and smear us for their own gain,” said an agitated Deutschman, a founder of the Committee of Ten, the group trying to detach. “They are playing the race card in a case that has nothing to do with race. How can you prove you are not racist? It’s impossible.”
The tangle between the Jackson Township residents and the Joliet school district is far from uncommon. For decades, parents of all color have employed inventive methods to keep their children out of certain schools–mainly schools with high minority enrollments. They’ve fled to the suburbs, paid thousands for private education, rented second homes in more desirable districts and placed their children under the guardianship of friends or relatives who live in those districts.
Detachment, critics charge, is just another means to that end.
“When a group of white homeowners petition to leave a mainly minority school and go to an all-white school, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why,” said Tim Rathbun, a Joliet lawyer representing the school district. “Their actions are consistent with people who do not want their kids to go to school with blacks. I’m not saying they are bad people, just fearful people.”
The Jackson Township detachment imbroglio began in October 1996 when parents signed a petition seeking to splinter from Joliet, arguing they wanted “continuity of education.” Under current high school boundaries, all of the children go to Manhattan Elementary and then would go on to Joliet Central, while classmates would go to Lincoln-Way.
Under a detachment proposal, the residents’ homes, as well as more than 1,000 acres of surrounding undeveloped land, would move from the Joliet school’s taxing district into Lincoln-Way’s.
“We have nothing against Joliet Central,” said Klimek, who owns a house in Jackson Township but rents an apartment in Manhattan so her 15-year-old son can attend Lincoln-Way. “But when kids go to school for nine years with the same kids, it’s really hard on them to be separated from them in high school. It can be devastating.”
According to state law, a neighborhood can detach, essentially, if a majority of voters in the area support it and if they can prove it won’t unduly harm the school district’s financial tax base. Even Joliet Township High School Supt. Jim Clark acknowledges that the group has met that burden of proof. But attorneys for the school district employed another angle.
They argued that allowing residents to cede would equate to further segregation of schools and, therefore, violate the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974. The argument persuaded a State Board of Education hearing officer to allow testimony about race–testimony that otherwise would not have been allowed under state law.
That ruling opened the floodgates for accusations of racism. During several hearings in February, witnesses–including an African-American pastor in Joliet, a Joliet psychologist and a professor from Northwestern–accused the petitioners of racial motivations and said their desires were “unadulterated racism.”
Those charges incensed Committee of Ten members.
“They used paid experts who have never met any of us to accuse us or being racist,” said Deutschman, who has two children at Manhattan Elementary. “Talk about stereotyping.”
But Joliet Supt. Jim Clark defended the tactic.
“These experts were presenting opinion based on their observations and research on a societal basis,” he said. “Can we say they (experts) dissected the brain cells of the petitioners to see what they are thinking? Absolutely not. But I am convinced that some people who signed that petition have race as a motivation.”
To buttress his stance, Clark pointed out that of the 12 high school age students who live in the target area, only one attends Joliet Central. The rest either attend private schools or find a way to get into Lincoln-Way.
The stakes were raised last week when Debbie Klimek’s ex-husband’s current wife accused Klimek of using racial epithets. Klimek, who says she is not even on speaking terms with her ex-husband or his wife, called the testimony “an obvious vendetta against me. I can’t believe the school people can’t see through it.”
Klimek and fellow petitioners say the school district’s attempt to “play the race card” amounts to a red herring. The district’s true motivation, they say, is money.
If the group detaches from Joliet, it will take with it an estimated $85,000 in property taxes. More important, it will take 1,300 acres of undeveloped land in Will County.
School officials agree that the loss of property taxes is a major concern.
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“But it’s not that we are greedy and simply want money,” Clark said. “If we lose them, others may follow and, in the end, that will only harm the students we now have.”