Attorneys for African-American parents in University Park and the Crete-Monee School District have spent nearly a decade hashing out a compromise to a civil rights lawsuit that questioned, among other things, the district’s busing practices. On Tuesday, residents in the area will get a chance to voice their opinions on the compromise.
Crete-Monee School District 201-U will have a 7 p.m. public hearing at the new middle school, on Blackhawk Drive near Old Monee Road, to present details of the proposed settlement. Their opinions will be sent to U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel, who has been overseeing the eight-year legal fight.
Tuesday’s court-ordered public hearing is, for all intents and purposes, a mere formality because Zagel already has given temporary approval to the agreement and the school district has instituted all but one of the directives in it. The remaining directive–the reopening of the middle school in University Park–is slated for September.
Still, the public hearing gives parents a chance to voice concerns over a legal tangle that has divided the sprawling Will County school district along racial lines and tied up a great deal of its resources. The hearing also will give parents the first opportunity to talk about the reopening of the middle school, which will mean the busing of large numbers of white students into University Park.
“We don’t anticipate a huge turnout or a lot of controversy because the lawsuit is basically over and the pieces to the settlement are already in place,” said District 201-U Supt. Steve Humphrey. “But we want to hear what people have to say about it.”
The legal battle began in 1990 when a group of University Park African-Americans filed a civil rights suit alleging discrimination in the district’s system of electing school board members, the busing of African-American students and the closing of Deer Creek Middle School in University Park.
The voting issue was settled in 1993 when Judge Zagel ordered the district to switch from at-large voting to district representation, giving African-Americans a greater chance of getting elected.
The busing issue was settled in 1995 when the district created an intermediate center.
Before that, the district bused about 300 African-American students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods while no white children were bused into University Park. In 1995 the district turned one of the elementary schools in rural Crete into an intermediate center for 5th and 6th graders and bused all students to the center. Kindergartners through 4th graders stay in their neighborhood schools.
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The final piece of the puzzle–the reopening of the middle school–has been the most contentious. But in 1996, district officials agreed to reopen the school, in part, to avoid an estimated $2 million in legal fees.
But the reopening continued to draw controversy. Twice the district missed target dates to reopen the school. School officials attributed the delays to construction problems. University Park residents and village officials alleged that the district has been stalling.
After $4.8 million in renovations, the school is ready to open. By the 1998-99 school year, Crete-Monee Junior High will close and all district students will attend the refurbished Deer Creek.