For 10 years the red brick building on Blackhawk Drive in University Park has been silent.
The halls, once alive with children’s laughter and shuffling feet, are hushed. The classrooms, once filled with eager students and dedicated teachers, are muted.
But now, a decade after a controversial vote shuttered the school, Deer Creek Junior High will again come alive. Crete-Monee school officials plan to reopen the school in the fall as part of a settlement to end a civil rights battle between the school district and parents in predominantly African-American University Park.
“The reopening of this school shows that our voices have finally been heard,” said Jim Harris, one of four University Park parents who sued the school district over the closing of Deer Creek. “We are finally getting justice after we fought for it for 10 years. Reopening the school may not seem like much to a lot of people, but to us, it shows that determination on our part turned back racial discrimination.”
Harris and three other University Park parents sued Crete-Monee School District 201-U in 1990, alleging a host of civil rights violations, including race-based, one-way busing and the method of electing school board members. But it was the closure of Deer Creek in 1988 that prompted the lawsuit.
The suit, although not officially settled, took a huge leap toward resolution last week when a U.S. district judge gave tentative approval to an agreement between the two sides. The district plans to hold a public hearing in July to give residents a chance to comment. Judge James Zagel is expected to give final approval in August.
“The issue created a lot of barriers,” said Steve Humphrey, superintendent of the school district. “But it’s time to move on, put the lawsuit behind us and worry only about educating our children.”
Incorporated in 1967, University Park spent a decade marketing itself as a racially mixed community. But as African-Americans, drawn by the village’s suburban feel, flocked to the community, white residents moved out.
In 1980, blacks made up 44 percent of University Park. By 1990, that figure jumped to 75 percent. Now, blacks represent more than 80 percent of the population, making University Park the only predominantly African-American municipality in the Crete-Monee school district and, indeed, in Will County.
Those patterns were reflected in the student enrollment at the district’s five elementary schools. So, in an effort to attain racial balance, the district bused hundreds of African-American students from their neighborhood school in University Park to four schools in mainly white communities. No white children were bused.
In the mid-1980s, the four elementary schools in predominantly white neighborhoods had African-American student enrollments of between 13 and 37 percent. Hickory Elementary in University Park, on the other hand, was 73 percent black.
Mike Gruberman, University Park village manager, said residents complained to district officials for a decade about the busing patterns.
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“They (district officials) basically said, in so many words, that the only way we would get things changed is if we sued,” Gruberman recalled. “They sent us the message that they did not care about our feelings, and they did not plan to do anything to make things better or less racist.”
Gruberman said the proverbial straw came in 1988 when declining enrollments forced the district to close one of its two junior high schools. Despite protests from University Park parents, the school board voted to close Deer Creek and bus University Park students to the middle school in Crete, even though Deer Creek was newer and more modern.
District officials said the move was temporary. Give them a year to fix it up and Deer Creek would be reopened as the district’s only junior high, they said. But the school languished.
Janine Dettbarn, whose mother was active in the battle to keep the school open, said fear, not structural concern, was the true reason Deer Creek remained closed.
“It was in University Park, . . . there was a lot of white fright at the time, and people in Crete and Monee didn’t want to send their kids to University Park,” said Dettbarn, who attended Deer Creek before it closed and whose mother, Donna, is a member of the University Park Educational Advisory Committee.
When the district failed to reopen the middle school, University Park sued on the three civil rights issues. The voting issue was settled in 1993 when Zagel ordered the district to switch to district representation instead of at-large, giving African-Americans a better chance to get elected.
The busing issue was settled in 1995 when the district turned one of the elementary schools into a districtwide intermediate center for 5th and 6th graders. All the district’s 5th and 6th graders are bused to the center, located in rural Crete. The remaining four elementary schools are now strictly neighborhood schools.
Despite the progress, the reopening of Deer Creek Junior High remained elusive. Twice district officials set a deadline for reopening it and twice that day passed. Humphrey blamed the delays on unforeseen construction problems. Harris and University Park officials say the delays were stalling tactics.
Deer Creek will reopen in September, although its name is likely to be changed to Crete-Monee Middle School.
University Park residents and school officials say they are glad the fight is over.
“It’s water under the bridge,” said Gruberman. “We cannot change the past. We can only change the future, and that is what we have done for our kids.”