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player ready...Parents and community members concerned with what they say is ongoing racial injustice at Niles West and Niles North High Schools told the Niles Township High School District 219 Board of Education at its Jan. 10 meeting they want it to take deliberate action to address their concerns.
Some parents who spoke during the public comment period said they had come to support the many students, some of whom are members of the Black Student Union, and others who spoke at the Board’s Dec. 6 meeting.
The January meeting also contained a report about an equity study that found that 9% of Black students have faced suspensions, more than four times higher than the district’s overall 2% rate of suspensions.
During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting, Monique Cooley-Hicks, parent of a recent Niles North graduate, addressed Superintendent Tom Moore, saying, “Dr. Moore, our Black students deserve accountability. We heard you take accountability even though you’ve been here only five months…The accountability has been missing from District 219 school leadership and needs to be a standard that every school leader is held to.”
Some of those who addressed the board are with the Skokie Schools Equity Collaborative, a local group of parents and community members who have said they are devoted to ending racism in the district, which serves Skokie, Lincolnwood, and large portions of Morton Grove and Niles.
Last year, students with the Black Student Union at Niles West High School held three protests and walkouts to draw attention to what they said is systemic racism in the school district, according to previous reporting. Many also went to the Dec. 6 meeting of the Board of Education to tell of incidents of racism they had encountered and ask the district to do better.
“We’re basically here to support them and to uplift their message and to share some of the background as to what has been happening over the years, to bring some accountability,” said Skokie Schools Equity Collaborative cofounder Maggie Vandermeer at the Jan. 10 meeting. “We as a community are watching and we care about this. It’s been going on for years. We need to address these kids’ issues.”
She urged the Board to grant the students’ requests for anti-hate speech training for students and staff, as well as hiring and retaining additional staff of color and other items.
Jasmine Sebaggala, a Niles West parent, addressing the board, said, “Adults more concerned about damage control than student suffering need to take responsibility. Board members unwilling to respond to hundreds and hundreds of letters detailing the exodus of Black staff and racist experiences of Black and brown students, or the presentations by their own principals and teachers about how we are unfairly grading and over-disciplining our Black students, need to take responsibility.
“Students using racist slurs need to be held responsible. Teachers who don’t address racial harm or who perpetuate it themselves must be held accountable.”
At last months’ meeting, student speakers and others said they want the district to call out those responsible for hate speech in all forms. Some also said they want the district to offer courses on African American history, mandatory training for staff and freshmen students on preventing and avoiding racism and hate speech, better recruitment and retention of Black staff and for the district to hire a second equity officer who can focus on the growth and academic outcomes of students of color.
Skokie resident Jeff Hosfield told the board he believes it’s important to teach students about racism and inequality and said he is teaching his children to respect differences between ethnic groups, but not to dwell on that.
“I think when there’s too much focus of dwelling on them, it actually causes more division,” he added. “It actually causes more people to attack Blacks, to attack Jews, to attack Asian Americans. That’s just how I see it.”
The Board also devoted a portion of the Jan. 10 meeting to reviewing and discussing the results of a study titled “Equity Diagnostic and Equity Analysis.” Board members had commissioned the study in July 2021 from consultant Hanover Research, which they paid an annual rate of $75,000 for three years to conduct various projects, the district said.
The recently-released nine-page study was gleaned from 638 responses from staff, students and parents/guardians.
Among other things, it states that some students received better grades depending on who their teacher was.
“I ask our administration, is that true or is that perception?” Board of Education Vice President Joseph Nowik asked. “I’d like to know.”
“If indeed teachers are grading kids disproportionately, and departments are allowing this to happen, this needs to be addressed in a timely manner,” he added. “I think biases by teachers giving preferential treatment for whatever reason hurts all of our students in the long run and affects the merits of what a good grade is.”
The study also states that Black students are significantly more likely to receive a suspension compared with other racial/ethnic groups and that overall, Black students are overrepresented in all the behavioral, course failure, and special education program enrollment outcomes.
“However, the overrepresentation is especially evident with the suspension outcome,” the study says. “Across the district, about 2% of students were suspended in each year from 2016 to 2021, but the rate is more than four times as high among Black students (9%).”
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But Nowik noted that only about 4% of stakeholders in the district took part in the survey and he said that’s probably not enough to get a clear picture of what’s happening. He also said it did not shed any new light on problems at the high schools.
“Even though this is a baseline, I hope moving forward we figure out a way we are able to get to the students, get to the parents, get a better cross-section of the respondents,” he said. “Over the last two, three years our community has known that Black and brown students are disproportionately disciplined and these issue are here. I think we as a community need to move from the ‘what’ to the ‘why’ and how to fix it.”