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player ready...After spending eight years haggling over busing and voting practices with Crete-Monee school officials, African-Americans in University Park called Tuesday for the healing to begin.
“We need to throw away the hatchet and throw away the knives and quit stabbing each other,” said Ed Palmer, mayor of University Park. “We need to bring about a bond so we can go forth and educate our children.”
Palmer made his comments during a public hearing called to air details of a proposed settlement to a civil rights lawsuit filed by African-American residents in University Park. The hearing, which attracted about 50 people, was held at Deer Creek Junior High School. The school’s closing 10 years ago sparked the civil rights suit.
Some details of the legal settlement have been leaked since U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel gave temporary approval last month. The official agreement was presented to the public for the first time Tuesday.
Crete-Monee School District 201-U agreed to reopen Deer Creek Junior High; institute a multicultural training program for all teachers in the district; make a good-faith effort to integrate the district’s four elementary schools; and pay University Park $225,000.
Few people spoke during the hearing, but their comments will be sent to Zagel, who has been overseeing the eight-year legal fight. Zagel will review the comments. His formal OK is expected in August.
The agreement would end to a bitter civil rights battle that has pitted African-American parents in University Park against the white establishment of Crete-Monee school district. The fight officially began in 1990 when a group of black parents backed by village officials sued the district alleging a host of civil rights violations.
But the seeds of discontent were sown at least a decade earlier.
Incorporated in 1967, University Park spent a decade marketing itself as a racially mixed community. But as African-Americans flocked to the community, white residents moved out. In 1980, blacks made up 44 percent of University Park. Today, they represent more than 80 percent of the population, making it the only predominantly African-American municipality in the school district.
The housing patterns were reflected in the enrollment of the district’s five elementary schools. To attain racial balance, the district bused hundreds of blacks from University Park to schools in mainly white communities. No white children were bused.
University Park residents said they complained for decades that the busing was unfair. But they were spurred to file the civil rights suit when the district closed the town’s middle school in 1987 and began busing University Park students to the middle school in Crete.
School officials promised to reopen the school within a year after completing needed renovations. But in 1990–with the school still shuttered–African-American parents filed suit alleging discrimination in the system of electing school board members, the busing of African-American students and the closing of the middle school.
The suit dragged on until 1993, when 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 turned one of the elementary schools in rural Crete Township into an intermediate center and began busing all 5th and 6th graders. The kindergarten through 4th graders were then returned to neighborhood schools, including Hickory Elementary in University Park.
The final sticking point–the closing of the middle school–has been the most contentious. But after years of legal wrangling, the district agreed in 1996 to spruce up the former Deer Creek Middle School and reopen it as the district’s only middle school.