After two weeks of rallies, rhetoric and a brief stint in jail, Rev. Jesse Jackson returned to Chicago Thursday, leaving this small central Illinois city to deal with the consequences of the dispute over several expelled students.
Before taking off, however, Jackson finally enrolled the students in alternative school programs for credit, which the local school board had offered last week after Gov. George Ryan intervened.
The board also has since lowered the expulsions from two years to one year for engaging in a fistfight that sent spectators tumbling through the stands at an Eisenhower High School football game in September.
Jackson had resisted enrolling the young men in alternative schools, but he said he did so in a “show of good faith” as his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition pursues lawsuits against the school board’s handling of the expulsions in state and federal court.
Decatur School Supt. Kenneth Arndt Thursday was in Chicago and argued his board’s side of the dispute before the editorial boards of several publications, including the baiduhai.
Arndt said two state-mandated expulsion hearings–one before an independent hearing officer appointed by the Decatur school board and one before the board itself–were held on the students’ cases. The parents of the students were notified of both those sessions by phone and by certified letter, Arndt said. Nevertheless, only one of the students and one of his parents showed up, he said.
“The board never really heard the other side,” Arndt said. “So the board had to rely strictly on the hearing officer.” Had the students appeared, he said, “it would have made a difference.”
But Jeffrey Perkins, a former school board member who was still on the panel when the hearings were held last month, disputed Arndt’s contention. Perkins, the only board member to vote against the initial two-year expulsions, said several of the students and their parents attended the hearings before the school board.
And Keith Anderson, a founder of the Decatur chapter of PUSH, said four of the children and their parents attended the hearings. “I was there,” Anderson said. “I brought ’em.”
Before the hearings, school administrators had recommended that the students be expelled for two years, Arndt said, and the hearing officer later came to agree.
When the board took up those recommendations, only one student showed up with his parent and sought permission to withdraw from school so he could enroll elsewhere without a blot on his record, Arndt said.
The board agreed to the request because it had an opportunity to hear the student’s side of the story, Arndt said. “We didn’t hear anything from the other six parents,” he said.
Anderson disputed that assertion, but added that two students did not attend their hearings because school administrators told them it would be a waste of time.
“Every last one of the parents told me the board assured them that, `All six of your kids are going to be kicked out no matter what you do,’ ” Anderson said.
Diane Doty, the mother of a 15-year-old Decatur student who was recently expelled for fighting in an unrelated case, said she had an experience similar to the ones described by Anderson.
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“They told me he couldn’t win the hearing so I had to voluntarily withdraw him,” Doty said.
Doty came to the alternative school headquarters Thursday morning to complain that the students backed by Jackson were leap-frogging her son and others on a waiting list to get in. Jackson assured her that he would support her fight to get her son into an alternative school program.
“You are right to fight for your child,” he told Doty.
Jackson and state Schools Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee have suggested that the expelled students be readmitted to regular classes next semester if they perform well at the alternative school.
But Arndt said Thursday that such a move would backfire on two of the expelled students who are seniors because they have missed courses required for graduation that are not offered during the second semester. However, the superintendent said the two might qualify for graduation if they pass the alternative program.
“Why would you put a kid in a regular traditional program knowing full well he won’t have enough credits to graduate?” Arndt asked.
Jackson did gather support Thursday from members of the state Legislative Black Caucus.
The group, led by Sen. Donne Trotter (D-Chicago), called for a law requiring alternative education for expelled students except in cases of gross misconduct.