Mahomet Chamber School Board Forum Transcript and Additional Information
The following is the transcription of the Mahomet Chamber of Commerce Mahomet-Seymour School Board forum with additional facts and figures regarding the state of the Mahomet-Seymour School District. The three candidates running for two in-township seats are Laura Eden Lang, Max McComb, Sunny McMurry and Rebecca Richardson. The two candidates running for one out-of-township seat are Justin Lamb and Patrick MacKay.
While accurate in content, the transcription may not be grammatically correct and may include typos.
Facts and figures provided in orange.
Question: Diversity is lacking on all fronts in our schools, including students, faculty, staff, members of the school board and administrators. Schools are an important reason why new residents choose one town over the other and representation matters. How can the school board help to improve our schools’ diversity and better prepare our students for the world outside of Mahomet?
Patrick MacKay (out-of-township seat): I think it’s important to note obviously the changing demographics in our community. We look very different than we were five to 10 years ago.
Racial/Ethnic Diversity – White per the Illinois Report Card:
2020: 87-percent white
2019: 87-percent white
2018: 88-percent white
2017: 90-percent white
2016: 95-percent white
(continued Patrick MacKay): And it’s also important to acknowledge that that’s not going to reverse itself; as we see more and more young families moving to those new single family homes that are being built south of town. It’s also important to note, I think, that the diversity issues and those challenges in terms of hiring teachers and administrators, that is a country-wide issue, it’s not just here in Mahomet. Now proving diversity in the workforce I think something that we could do, and I think we could do with outside help, seeking out third-party expertise is: let’s take a look at the hiring practices and processes that we have in the district. Perhaps, there is unconscious bias in those processes and practices that are actually discouraging minorities to apply for positions. In terms of improving diversity on the board itself, well you can’t force people to run for the board but you can definitely give them opportunities to serve in different capacities, and hopefully that would be a catalyst itself for actually running for the board. Now in terms of our students I think we’re definitely responsible for reading our students for a world outside of Mahomet. I would support, or I would support the board facilitating a curriculum review, led by teachers and educators, obviously, also seeking input from credible third parties. Obviously, knowing that the majority of the curriculum is mandated by the state. Finally, in terms of diversity, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s okay that this topic makes us feel uncomfortable, but there are wonderful positives by introducing diversity in the classroom.
Justin Lamb (out-of-township seat): Our community is made up of people that live here and people that move here. So while it’s impossible to control that, as a person who lives here, one thing that we can do is be very welcoming to anybody that does move into our community. And welcome them with open arms, and just being a decent human being, obviously is very important. To make Mahomet-Seymour a welcoming place we need to be the best we can be as a person. Within the schools we need to make sure that we have the resources in place so that we can best serve our student population: the resources being literature, the textbooks, being, where we want them, continue training for our teachers and staff and administration and stuff like that. As far as opportunities for teachers, administrators, board members and whatnot, when opportunities do open up to be for other people to come in we just need to put that information out there for all. And anybody to see the opportunities that they could come into for Mahomet. And like I said, just welcoming everybody with open arms.
Laura Eden Lang (in-township seat): I think our school board really has a wonderful opportunity to really celebrate diversity. This isn’t something we should be afraid of. I appreciate what Patrick’s saying about this is a topic that often makes us feel uncomfortable. And what I’ve noticed is that when we lean into things that make us uncomfortable, that’s when we have the most growth. When we don’t have growth is when we pull back from it. Diversity is already here and diversity is continuing to come. So I think it’s really an exciting time for the school board to set the tone, to work with the superintendent to kind of set this tone, because then it trickles down into our wonderful staff and faculty, that then trickles into our families and students. I think our students, when I’ve met with them and heard from students and parents in the community, they go ready for these conversations, these are conversations that can be really helpful, that can have building character and strength going on. So I think the school board can really help by leading the way, and not reeling back from it, but leaning into it the other way. The other part of the question is thinking about how can we prepare our students for the world beyond. And I know, as a lot of Mahomet-Seymour graduates have found out when they leave the world, wow, it’s really different. And one of those ways is offering our students the ability to have more language training. I think language training should start a whole lot younger because that’s when our brains are ready to take it, but then also to engage with culture and ideas and to celebrate those throughout our schools giving our students opportunity to engage with the world here in Mahomet
Sunny McMurry (in-township seat): Laura, I love that idea, watching the dual language Academy in Champaign; I love that idea. When you’re thinking about diversity as simply race and ethnicity, you can’t deny that there’s not race and ethnicity diversity in Mahomet. But, one of the pieces that I think often gets overlooked is the fact that there are other marginalized populations in our community that do provide diversity and do provide a little bit of texture to our schools. We have diversity in family structure and family makeup; we have diversity in socioeconomic status; we have diversity in learning abilities and physical abilities, and those are all populations that we do need to make sure that we’re taking care of. Patrick was right, if you look at statewide data in the state of Illinois, actually there are only approximately 6% of all teachers in the state of Illinois identify as black. When you look at how many identify as white, it is over 82%. So when we look at what our teaching population looks like and how we can bring in more diverse teachers, I actually might think it kind of starts before they get to being teachers, it actually starts in pre-service education, and even in high school, opening the eyes of students to what teachers can do in the future. When we’re looking at our current student needs kind of like Justin was alluding to, when we examine the Illinois interactive report card you can see that there’s a significant learning gap between students who are identified as low-income learners and students who are identified as non-low-income learners.
Facts from the Illinois Report Card on the Achievement Gap between Low Income/Non Low Income Students (2019 data was used, 2020 data was not available):
ELA
Math
Source: MAHOMET-SEYMOUR CUSD 3: IAR. (2020, October). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=trends&source2=achievementgapiar&Districtid=09010003026
(continued Sunny McMurry): And this population really needs to be catered to and helped and supported in as many ways as we possibly can. This is not a trend. This is not a one-time gap. This is a trend that has been happening over the last several years. And we have to make sure that all of our students, whether they are racially diverse whether they are socioeconomically diverse, whether they are physically diverse and with physical abilities, that we are meeting the needs of all of those students, and we’re preparing them for life outside of Mahomet by getting them to achieve at their highest level and developing social competencies so that they can collaborate well with others.
Rebecca Richardson (in-township seat): Yes, and I agree, Sunny, that you know my thought on this question about diversity, if you go to the actual definition of diversity or the meaning of diversity, it’s really simply difference. And so our population of students, we already have dealt with a lot of differences. But I think we could do better dealing with those differences. The academic gap or the achievement gap that Sunny talked about is actually one of my major platforms: I want to see us narrow that gap. It’s been a long time trend that we have underserved that population. We do an excellent job preparing students for college and college prep. But we are really challenged when it comes to serving these low-income students, and other types of racially diverse students, as well. It’s not only us that recognizes these differences. There are people outside of our community who recognize that we don’t have the best track record when it comes to diversity. Great schools.com is what Zillow uses when you’re looking at homes in various communities. The first thing parents will look at is the schools. We are ranked 2 out of 10 for racial diversity. And so that really brings us down in terms of our ranking with a very influential organization like greatschools.com. So I do think we have a lot to work on. I think it takes time. I think that’s part of the thing is, we all want a revolution and change fast, but it doesn’t matter that it happens in our lifetime, it matters that it happens. And so sometimes we have to be patient and let it happen organically, but we also can really take the time to make it happen and take ownership of it as well.
The following is a look at how Mahomet-Seymour has ranked on Niche, Great Schools, Chicago Sun Times and US News since 2015. The information has been pulled from Mahomet Daily data. Each site has been checked for 2021 updates.
NICHE:
Mahomet-Seymour District:
2016: Ranked 25th in the State
2017: Ranked 28th in the State
2018: Ranked 30th in the State
2021: Ranked 32 in the State
Mahomet-Seymour High School:
2015: Ranked 89th
2016: Ranked 74th
2017: Ranked 69th
2018: Ranked 93rd
2021: Ranked 45th
Mahomet-Seymour Junior High:
2015: Ranked 42nd
2016: Ranked 50th
2017: Ranked 136th
2021: Ranked 134th
Lincoln Trail Elementary:
2015: Ranked 77th
2016: not ranked
2017: not ranked
2018: not ranked
2021: ranked 590th
Middletown Prairie has not been ranked since opening.
US NEWS (Looks solely at AP Tests)
Mahomet-Seymour High School
2018: Ranked 32nd in Illinois
2019: Ranked 56th in Illinois
2020: Ranked 48th in Illinois
CHICAGO SUN TIMES:
Mahomet-Seymour High School:
2011: 90th
2012: 36th
2013: 34th
2014: 28th
GREAT SCHOOLS:
Mahomet-Seymour CUSD #3
Mahomet-Seymour High School
2021: 6 out of 10
Mahomet-Seymour Junior High
2021: 8 out of 10
Lincoln Trail Elementary
2021: 6 out of 10
Middletown Prairie Elementary
2021: no rating shown
Max McComb (in-township seat): You know with national events in the last year we’ve heard a lot about diversity, and there’s really an ongoing national discussion, and we’re a part of that here in Mahomet. As far as the school goes, I think first of all it’s important to make a distinction: our school is charged with serving our local community. However, the school district isn’t really in charge of who moves here, or who makes up that community. That’s the situation the school district inherits, not something the school district gets to decide. But we do have some decisions we can make and there are places that we can show some leadership. And the question mentioned faculty and staff, and we really do try and desire to show some diversification and diversity when we hire faculty and staff. The problem is we’re in the middle of this little situation called the national teacher shortage. And we’ve got a shortage not only nationally, but we got even more of a shortage in Illinois, because, frankly, with the financial conditions in Illinois, most bright education folks want to go somewhere else. So we’ve had some open positions, unfilled positions, especially in special needs for about four years now. In December we voted to revise board policies 110 310 and 610, and that represents a district commitment that we put diversity language in those. We also went to great efforts with our citizen group, when we picked our citizen’s group to do our initiative, we wanted that to be inclusive. Finally, we’re fully aware that with students they are oftentimes entering situations when they graduate from Mahomet that are more diverse in our district. We try to do our best to compare students with social-emotional learning and cultural competency, It is a work in process here in Mahomet.
Question: How as a school board member, would you kind of propose or what thoughts or ideas do you have that would improve the diversity around the full gamut of schools. We’re not just talking students but you know faculty staff and so forth, if, if you have any thoughts on that…?
Patrick MacKay: Sure, so I already mentioned that possibly we could look at the hiring practices to see if we can actually see if there’s any unconscious bias, which actually works against our favor in terms of hiring and attracting diverse candidates. Also I think there’s an opportunity, and I think we’re going to get to this question in terms of Is there something we can do at the committee level, to actually involve the community in these conversations. We know that based on conversations with voters that this is an important issue, it’s a hot button issue. They want to see that done. I think the conversations we’ve had are indicative of its importance in the community. And so I think that’s definitely something we can also pursue.
Laura Lang: Yeah, I agree with Patrick. It’s thinking a lot about our hiring practices. I think we have a few folks that are ethnically diverse already on our faculty and staff, but it’s quite a small pool at this point. And I would love to make our community more of a welcoming environment for people of different demographics. I mean like Sunny was saying earlier: we all come in different shapes and sizes, different strengths and weaknesses, different vocations, different learning disabilities or learning strengths, different colors, different cultural backgrounds. And unfortunately, I don’t think Mahomet always had a record of being super welcoming in that area. But I see that happening now. I see people, wonderful people who have lived here for years, people that I know really be welcoming to people in the community. And I think that’s where it starts is this atmosphere of really welcoming people, and then the students feel that from us. So I think also providing for our faculty and staff continued training opportunities to explore what’s out there. I think it’s really easy to become, you know, a little complacent in your job because life is busy and you’ve got kids at home, but I think if we can offer them as a district, a chance to interact with different cultures, different innovations in learning and different languages. I think it will help. I think it’ll encourage people and we’ll see a lot of growth.
Rebecca Richardson: Obviously I agree with quite a few things that have been said. I agree with everything, actually, that’s that’s already been said. Just to a finer point to what has been said, we don’t control, who comes here, ultimately. In fact, over the past five years, we have our biracial student population has grown 5%. So, we are, it’s happening, and we can either plan for it and welcome it and serve the needs of that population, or we can choose to be fearful of it and be intimidated by it. I just really think that we are missing an opportunity there. Because if people see that we are providing a service and we are welcoming to those ethnically diverse populations, more will come. And I’m not saying just because they’re ethnically diverse they should come, but I’m saying you know when you have high-achieving students when you have people who want to come and live in your community and make it better because we know diversity makes us smarter. And that’s data has proven that. I think it’s really important that we keep our eye on that, and we look at it from that way. So the 341 students that make up are 13% of our population, are not white. So we have to serve those needs that those 13% as well.
See diversity statistics above
Justin Lamb: I agree with Laura and Rebecca. I mean if we can embrace, like, where we’ve gotten to this point, and just continue to build off that, being welcoming and being supportive and encouraging growth in those areas. I think we have. I mean it’s not something that can change overnight it’s something that’s got to build it’s got to keep continuing in the right direction. And I, like Laura said, I’m encouraged with what I’ve been seeing in the recent past, just where we’re moving with this, and it’s very encouraging to me.
Sunny McMurry: I was going to touch on this in the next question but you’re throwing me off, Stacy, so I’m gonna I’m gonna try to take bits and pieces here. But I think one of the pieces that everybody has hit on is that we need to be a welcoming community. And that we, as adults need to be modeling that common respect, and those working relationships for our children and for our community members. You know, I keep hearing that it’d be great to involve the teachers in this planning and all that. And I think it’s important to note that they are. There is activity taking place with diversity inclusion and equity within the district, that’s already happening behind the scenes, and it’s been happening for several years. And so, I am truly a believer that when you are looking for lasting meaningful change, that takes a long time, just like Rebecca said. If you want instant change, you can mandate something, you’ll be met with resistance and maybe you’ll see quote-unquote, change, which is really just compliance. But if you’re looking for meaningful change that will last over time, and actually make our schools and our community and our families, even better, that has to kind of come a little more organically, a little more within from the experts, our teachers, who are kind of leading this task.
Max McComb: I think there’s been a lot of good comments made so far. I particularly like what Sunny said there at the end. I also will steal a little bit from what I think is the next question. But, one thing that we can do as a school district is we need to make sure our staff and the folks that work for us feel comfortable and have the skills in order to address issues of diversity and inclusion when they come up. And the more that they are comfortable that the more experience, they have, the more tools they feel they have, the better they feel they are at it, the more natural that process will become. And the more we’ll work with our kids, the more we’ll work with our families, and the more we’ll move it forward in Mahomet. Like Sunny said, meaningful change is not instantaneous. It takes time. It has to be done on purpose. And we can do it. We’ve solved all kinds of problems here in our schools and our community and if we put our heads together and really work at this, I’m convinced we’ve got people that can do it.
Question: Since moving to Mahomet three years ago both my son, a middle schooler, and daughter in elementary have experienced multiple issues with race and equality in our schools. Despite countless letters and conversations with the school board, and several protests this summer, the current board has twice voted down a district-level committee to address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. Would you support a district committee to unify our efforts, guide future steps and send a message to our community that all students matter and the issue deserves our attention and long-term commitment?
Rebecca Richardson: Well first of all, make it short and sweet, to begin with, yes, absolutely, I would. I would support that 100%. I watched with kind of confusion and uncertainty about why the board, they were hesitant to do that: except for the fact that there were questions like, well we don’t know what the goal is; we don’t know what the scope is; we don’t know what the planning is? That isn’t how you begin a conversation. You begin a conversation by starting. And so I think the board missed out on an opportunity there, but I don’t think it’s too late. I think that, you know, we, we still can do better. And something like I like we were saying earlier, maybe last year it was too scary: we dealt with COVID, we dealt with, you know, a lot of things we dealt with a lot of racial adversity and a lot of brutality last year. I think maybe giving it some time and stepping back. Maybe it is a good time to revisit that and be able to put it in a context that is positive and moving forward rather than reactive and defensive. So I would absolutely be in support of forming that type of committee now.
Max McComb: Nine years ago, a couple teachers at our high school worked to implement an ACT, now, SAT prep period for juniors. The goals were to review and refresh juniors on material that would be on the test, along with practicing test-taking skills, and to build confidence, along with competency. In three years we were able to move High School ACT scores from an average of 21.6 to 24.4. Our school district, which has always been regarded as academically strong, was suddenly consistently being ranked the number one and number two academic High School in downstate Illinois. Most importantly parents shared with me that their younger children who participated in this new program, who in their parent’s opinion weren’t really smarter than their older siblings, who didn’t have the program had really benefited because of greater options. Both a larger number of interested colleges and more substantial scholarship dollars became available to the younger kids. We saw a 19% increase in students going on to college programs. The challenge of the Board of Education, had been to pursue excellence. There was no board-initiated directive. But there was a commitment and vision of a small group of teachers, particularly Dan Ryan and Jamie Colbert, that responsible for this huge change. Many of you know that Dr. Lindsay Hall was a part of our school district earlier in her career as a junior high principal. Four years ago she came back as superintendent and Dr. Hall noticed immediately that our community had changed over the years, and realized that change would continue. She worked with our director of instruction Dr. Nicole Rummel, who reached out to the University of Illinois and began a relationship with U of I consultants to help our schools address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They began with staff development and training, teaching district employees skills, helping them to gain comfort, and addressing these areas. Again, this became four years ago, started four years ago well before the national events of last summer. Currently, we have equity, diversity, and inclusion committees in each building, looking at ways they can improve our schools and better equip our students. The work is ongoing, our high school now has an active Gay-Straight Alliance student group this would have been unheard of not too many years ago when my son was a student here. This year our high school Diversity Committee also launched Bulldog Voices, a place where students can gather and discuss Equity and Inclusion issues. I understand our students are having some great discussions as they look to address issues that make our community better. If resolutions and leadership-level committees could really solve these issues, these problems would have been solved nationally, years ago. And last summer never would have happened. It takes real work in the trenches. It takes real work to impact lies in our community. And I’m proud and thankful that our district is doing real work in these important areas.
Laura Eden Lang: First of all, I want to address the writer of the question, and say I am sorry for what you’ve encountered. And I confess, I am optimistically oblivious a lot of times about these things because of the family I was born into and where I’m at in status right now. So I am sorry that you’ve had to walk through that and your kids have to walk through that. This has been such a wonderful process of going through this election, just meeting with people. And people have been pouring out their stories, especially students, and I have heard a lot of these cases, which has just surprised me. The wonderful thing is, is there are other cases of wonderful encouraging things going on. So we need to work on those two together. But I want to address what Max said. He’s absolutely right there’s already a district committee headed up by Dr. Rummel and Dr. Hall. They’ve done a good job to go ahead and start engagement, to some degree. And each building does have its own committee. But I would propose instead of a district committee that we have a board committee. Because a board committee can really set a tone and oversight to bring cohesiveness between the different buildings. As I’ve engaged with people within these committees, they’re floundering a little bit to understand cohesively what their direction is. And I think to really make a direction we need to add some sort of guidance and idea and really cast a vision: what are our goals; what do those look like; and how do we reach those. So I’m excited to see what the years ahead of us bring, because like Max said I think we’ve cracked up in the case and begun, but there’s a lot of just vision casting and goal setting we can do.
Sunny McMurry: So a lot of what has been said, is what I want to echo. When asked if I would support a district committee regarding these diversity inclusion and equity issues, it’s a very wishy-washy answer. I would support it if it complemented the work that is already being done. As Max mentioned, this is work that has been ongoing behind the scenes for quite a while. And it has become a very internalized and personal personal process for the teachers who are leading it. So I would be hesitant to bring in anybody from, maybe who isn’t a classroom teacher who isn’t an educator to come in and dictate or propose what teachers might be doing wrong or what teachers might need to change. Personally, speaking only as myself, if I had somebody who wasn’t a teacher come in and tell me what I needed to do differently in my classroom. I would be highly offended. So, I have a feeling that if we were to propose a different Committee, the easiest way to make that actually feasible, is to make sure that it’s connecting and complementing with the work that we’re already doing. And it’s not undermining what teachers and administrators and staff and leaders have already put into place. So I actually think the biggest issue here is the communication that’s coming from the building-level, and the district-level surrounding what we are already doing with diversity, equity and inclusion. If our community and our families had a better understanding of what it is that our teachers are taking on, then I feel like people would be a little more understanding of what was happening, and would be a lot more invested in making it even better for our schools.
Patrick MacKay: Like Rebecca, I’ll be short and sweet in terms of answering the question first and foremost. Yes, I would support the creation of a committee. I do agree with the other folks that already have spoken that there needs to be continuity and connection with the ongoing efforts and initiatives that are already in place. However, when you read this question, and when you watched or listened to those folks that poured out their souls last year and talked about their experiences, you have to ask yourself, what more can we do? Asking that question is not an admission of failure, or guilt or blame. But your response needs to constantly evolve; it’s not static. This is a very dynamic issue, and once again, it’s an uncomfortable one. And also I think this particular topic of diversity, it’s come up, time and again, individual conversations I’ve had with folks in the community; it’s come up with folks in group settings. And I think that’s indicative of its importance. And I think it shows an appetite in this community in that people are engaged and I think these people do know what’s going on in the schools. They are informed. But I think we should have this further initiative. Why not raise this issue that we all agree is of the utmost importance to the same level as another issue that we’re going to talk about, which is capacity in our schools? They’re equally important. And they come up in equal time in the conversations that we’ve had.
Justin Lamb: I’d also like to say I’m sorry that this has happened to your family. That bothers me greatly. As a parent, I wish we could live in a world where everybody could just get along. I mean, obviously that’s impossible. These are critical issues that all of our students are facing today. And every one of our students should be valued and challenged to achieve their highest potential. In my eyes diversity, equity and inclusion should bring us closer together, and not separate us. As a parent, we have a responsibility at home as well. It’s not just in our schools, we have to start at home. We have to start teaching our kids values at an early age. I mean, kids aren’t born this way. I mean, it’s learned somewhere along the line, and we need to address all fronts and make sure that we can address it and properly just prepare kids for life ahead. Like, like we’ve said the current groundwork that we have in place is good. And I think we’re working towards great things with that. And to answer the question I would say that I’m at a maybe. Yes I would definitely be interested in hearing how we could collaborate and work, a committee into this, and figure out how we can best address this situation.
Question: Our next question brings the second point about overcrowding in schools or the perception of overcrowding in schools. How do you plan to address the overcrowding in schools, not necessarily class size, with the continued growth of the community? Will you be in favor of continuing the plan to build a new junior high school next to Middletown prairie school or propose something different?
Sunny McMurry: I know this sounds crazy but I’m actually really glad this is a problem we have because that means people are moving to Mahomet, and our community is a place where people want to be, and our schools are a place where people want to be. That being said, I remember when the new Junior High was being proposed. And I remember thinking, oh yes my youngest is going to be able to go to that junior high. And now she’s in third grade and I’m pretty sure she’s not going to be going to the junior high. So, going back to the idea of now having this urgent need because facilities are, we are outgrowing our facilities, I am not against having the junior high campus where it was initially planned to be, which is right next to Middletown Prairie. We have that land. But I think what we need to do before we make any decisions as a board is to really turn back to this new Facilities Planning Committee that’s just taken off. What is it called Bulldog Blueprint. I think we need to turn back to those community members who are working to figure out what this is what our facility needs are, what we currently have, what land we currently own, whether it be possible to use that land for school or for any other resources. And then I also think that we need to consider the other facilities within the district. So yes, right now, Junior High is incredibly overcrowded. However, when you think about Lincoln Trail, we need to think about updating the high school for a new generation of learners. We might even need to think about the transportation department if it’s if we have schools across two sides of town, then perhaps we need to have conversations about moving that. Short term there are lots of options that our district can can consider. Obviously portable classrooms behind the school building is an option, and our district has been really creative. When we moved from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten, we didn’t think we had any space, and then the next thing you know, the conference room at Middletown has been turned into five classrooms. So our district has a lot of creativity within their thinking that short term we can make some changes, but long term we definitely need to be thinking about our facilities.
Laura Eden Lang: Like Sunny said, this is not a new problem. I remember when I moved here in ‘85 as a four year old, it was already starting to burst at the seams. We were getting excited and they built the brand new Sangamon building. And year after year, the school board has really worked to increase that. But this isn’t a surprise. Ten years ago we heard wow our schools are at capacity. Actually, the junior high’s at capacity is what they said 10 years ago. And our other schools were getting there very, very quickly. So for the last 10 years we’ve known this problem and it shouldn’t be at the crisis point really that it is right now. So we need to jump in there. I love this community engagement initiative. We need to really help them, and they need to identify their priorities and then really wait to hear from the community.Like Sunny was saying, I don’t know if the right answer is to have the junior high out there by MPE. It might be, but, like she said, the school district actually owns quite a bit of land. So it’s stepping back and thinking about what are the resources we really have on hand, that we can use to not increase taxpayer dollars; that we can really use them as good stewards because we don’t. We are actually just stewards of District money it’s not our money to spend, but district, and also to really think creatively, like Sunny was mentioning. So I work in scheduling and a lot of times schools that suffer from overcrowding can go ahead and use scheduling, or creative use of facilities. I’m really excited to see what comes up, and I think to wait for this community engagement group to really set their priorities and bring us some great feedback and then to move.
Justin Lamb: Okay, yes this is definitely a hot topic, as we are busting on our seams here in Mahomet. And everything appears that we’re going to keep growing and keep moving in that direction. So, to answer the question yes I would support building the junior high out by MPE because that’s land that we currently own. It’s a plan that’s kind of been in the works over the years. And I’m definitely open to hearing other options, exploring those options if there’s other properties that are available other pieces of ground that we are able to build what we need on, and it’s feasible, we can definitely look into those, too. And in the short term, like others have mentioned, we need to be creative with the space that we have, and whether that means, throwing up dividers in current rooms to make two separate rooms or something like that, bringing in portable buildings for temporary use, stuff along those lines, but definitely we need to make this one of our top priorities as we continue to grow back.
Rebecca Richardson: Yes, you know, clearly overcrowding has been an issue for a long time. It’s a little bit amazing I think and there’s no, there’s no blame to be cast here, but it just takes a really, really long time to figure out how to build up your capacity. We’ve really struggled with that over the last 15-20 years even. I think things have changed quite a bit in the district since the original concept of building the junior high on that land adjacent to MPE. I would also say that we have still 840 new dwellings slated to be built that haven’t been built yet. About half of the families that move to them are about half of the population that moves Mahomet have families. So we’re going to say that about 400 family units are going to have kids.
Developments in Sangamon Field, Solace Apartments, Harvest Edge, Hunter’s Ridge, Ridge Creek, Thornewood Fifth, Prairie Crossing, Whisper Meadows and Jacob’s Landing are ongoing, according to the developer’s websites. Those site show at minumum over 800 developable plots. In the Mahomet-Seymour School District, 56-percent of homeowners have children.
To learn more visit: https://mahometdaily.com/top-10-things-to-know-about-current-mahomet-development/.
(Rebecca Richardson continued:) So we do need to think about a long-term plan to address the needs of not just the junior high, although the junior high is woefully in need of attention. But I think we need to be careful about a thing called functional fixedness. And that is having an end game, and then working a plan backward, and starting to make sure you get the end thing that you want. And I think we have to be really careful about that because like everyone else has said, creativity is really important at this point. And as far as the short-term goes we need to, first of all, be really mindful of the decisions that we make and how it will impact things in the longer term. For example, I still don’t have an understanding of why we sold Sangamon. There could be a very good reason why we did, but I can’t find the answer to that. So I think that’s one thing that we need to not repeat, is to not sell something that’s an asset to our public education, and we can’t utilize it anymore. I also think in the short term we really do have to be creative. We’re really fortunate in a way COVID wasn’t all bad. We learned that some of our students can learn virtually just as well as they can in the classroom. So creative thinking about how we educate our students. Some of them may do better virtually or they may do just as well virtually so we may be able to use classrooms for some students and virtual learning for others. You know staggered starts. Lessons that we’ve learned from COVID, I think we can apply in the short and even maybe in the longer term.
Max McComb: So this isn’t the new issue we will paint, playing catch up with facilities and in Mahomet-Seymour for years, decades. Okay. And the problem is people come and the money trails, and that has really been the issue. We’ve been working now for three years to get the community engagement initiative up and running. And that is a community effort to really assess our space issues and figure out where we need to go and what we need to do. It was delayed by the last election that was delayed by the pandemic. We have board members this time that said well we’re about to have an election, we better delay it. And by my assistance and the assistance of the majority of the board, we kept it moving forward. That group has met a couple times now. It’s a 20 member group: 20 plus members of our community. We’ve tried to make it as diverse as we can. They’re going to oversee that effort. They’ve got four co chairs already lined out, they’ve picked the name Bulldog blueprint, and pretty soon you’ll see community-wide meetings, whether they’re virtual or whether they’re in-person, we don’t know yet. But where people will get to come and share input and thoughts and have a stake in what we do with facilities. No surprise, Junior high is the most pressing need we have. We expect that to be addressed at the front end. And the reason we’re bringing the community in is we need community support. We have done all we can with the money that’s available. There will be a little bit of debt load coming free in a few years, but not near enough to solve what we need to do. So that’s why the community needs to be on board the community needs to understand the cost, the community needs to understand the needs. And do we need to go to junior high and where we need to build it, I’m going to tell you right now, I trust our community and I trust the process. There’s a little angst on that with some board members that want to see more board input into this. But we need community support to do this and the community has to help us figure this out. And I’m confident we will, whether it’s build a junior high, whether it’s build another building and move the junior high into an existing building, they’ll work through that. I will support what the community comes up with.
Patrick MacKay: Well, you know, going last year, I think I’d like to say something real quick, in this in this election where people say that you know we can’t get along, man, there’s a lot of room for agreement here about this topic. Yes, I would support the construction of a new junior high, but I think as everyone has just said, that is a long-term play here. So, and that’s as Max just said, that’s going to require significant input from the community above and beyond what’s already been done or facilitated through the Bulldog Blueprint committee. And then Sunny already kind of touched on some of the issues that will need to be addressed with respect to that new Junior High. So what about continuity that exists today between the junior high and the high school? What considerations should we address with faculty and staff, which might have responsibilities at both buildings? What sort of transportation issues do we need to be mindful of as we essentially separate into two different campuses? And finally, I would love to make sure, and I’m sure we’re going to see this is, we definitely need to engage with teachers with respect to any construction of a new junior high because they do have such a unique perspective and experiences to share with the community. Now, that’s the long-term play, but what can we do in the short term to alleviate the issue? Folks have already mentioned some of those options that we should consider that should get serious consideration and merit by that committee that includes modular classrooms, could include creative reuse of space. And also, who knows, maybe we could even consider an addition to the existing space. All I’m saying here is all this needs to be put on the table. It needs to be put in front of the community, and we need to have their serious input and support.
Question: So moving on to a topic that I think is a concern or curiosity to a lot of the population in Mahomet, especially those that kind of watch the school board meetings, I think most would agree that a major issue with our current school board is the obvious split and opposing sides, making it nearly impossible to have productive conversations and collaborative discussions. With recent comments it’s become apparent that some candidates have already aligned with the side. How do you as a new school board member or current school board member, how would you propose to break down the walls of these opposing sides so the board can truly focus on what’s best for the district in our kids, and how can we improve the overall conduct of or the overall perception of conduct of our board?
Justin Lamb: This is definitely a topic that we need to get figured out. I was saying as a new board member, I would have the opportunity to have a fresh start and to build new relationships with all the other board members. It’s obviously very important to be able to have good relationships to make the decisions that are best for our students and community. We have to have teamwork, we have to have collaboration, to be able to get these decisions made. We got to find some common ground somewhere and obviously, I think one of the most, the biggest focus we need to have is on our students. So if we can come to an agreement on putting our students first, building from there, trying to build some relationships and breaking these walls down. And when decisions are made on our topics and policies and stuff that we’re doing, we have to keep in mind the opposing views in our decision-making. We have to look at it from all sides, we have to really dig into it. Figure out talking to the community, figuring out what’s best for our kids. So, that’s how I would propose doing that.
Rebecca Richardson: Yes, this is actually one of the reasons why I decided to run for the school board because asI saw the meetings progress throughout this year, it really did bother me and concerned me. And I really felt like I see what’s going on. And in the work I do, I’ve worked with a lot of boards, with the boards I’ve dealt with, we’ve had sides, we’ve had many issues very similar to the hard times that we’re having with our current school board. And it boils down to a few things, I think. And one of them is making sure that every person or who earned that seat, in that boardroom is respected the same. So every, every single person is, with the exception of Jeremy, originally, but he was elected after being appointed, every single person now starting this time around will have been elected by their peers. So, I think that it’s important that everyone recognizes that we all have an equal voice on the board. I also think, this is really really an important thing that I’ve seen over the years with boards, you have to have, make sure that you elect a strong leadership that’s willing to put in the time and to internalize the issues and make sure they fully understand what it is they’re trying to communicate and discuss. So I think some of the some of the board meetings I’ve seen, I think that the board members could have been more prepared and backgrounded. And I guess, ;astly, I would say that to make it a priority for the board members to talk to each other. I think it’s really important that people develop relationships, outside of their board responsibilities, because it’s much harder to disrespect or to be angry with a person that you understand, than it is to be disrespectful and be angry with a person that you do not. So those are the things that I would, I would strive to do.
Sunny McMurry: Rebecca, we could have like written, each other’s comments. That’s almost word-for-word what I’ve wrote down. You know I think what’s interesting is: I love data. I have friends who love data. And I want to share a little bit of data. So obviously anybody who’s been to a board meeting seen a board meeting, you know that there are heated discussions, you know there are high emotions. But, data is just kind of cut-and-dry so I’m going to read this just because I don’t want to get it wrong. April, for the voting data with the board from April 2019 to February 21 of 2021, there were 163 voting items including the consent agenda because there have been some dissents on the consent agenda, but not counting in the actual meeting agenda: so we didn’t, I didn’t know that seven of vote to pull in the actual meeting agenda that was left out. What’s interesting to note is that when we’re thinking about this split that seems to be apparent on the board, only 19% of the votes were actually split by quote unquote sides.
Mahomet-Seymour Board Voting Data 2019-2021
Votes of Group of Max McComb, Merle Giles, Lori Larson and Jeremy Henrichs voting the same: Over 95-percent
Votes of Group of Meghan Hennesy, Ken Keefe and Colleen Schultz voting the same: Under 90-percent
Votes of Max McComb, Merle Giles and Lori Larson voting the same: Over 96-percent
Percent of All Votes (including unanimous votes) with 4-3 “sides” (ie. Max, Lori, Merle and Jeremy voting one way and Meghan, Ken and Colleen voting the other way): 11-percent
Percent of Contested Votes (excluding unanimous votes) 4-3 “sides”: 41-percent
Percentages of times board members voted “together”:
McComb and Larson: 98.48024%
Larson and Henrichs: 97.71242%
McComb and Giles: 97.66667%
McComb and Henrichs: 97.411%
Giles and Larson: 96.61017%
Giles and Henrichs: 96.49682%
Hennesy and Schultz: 94.95268%
Keefe and Hennesy: 90.64516%
Keefe and Schultz: 89.13738%
Larson and Keefe: 82.58065%
McComb and Keefe: 82.10863%
Giles and Keefe: 81.07143%
Henrichs and Keefe: 80.06873%
McComb and Hennesy: 79.17981%
Larson and Hennesy: 79.1667%
McComb and Schultz: 79.04192%
Henrichs and Schultz: 79.03226%
Larson and Schultz: 79.02736%
Giles and Hennesy: 78.59649%
Giles and Schultz: 78.40532%
Henrichs and Hennesy: 77.89116%
(Sunny McMurry continued:) Only 19% of the votes were coming out at a four to three split, which means that 81% of the votes that were taken, somebody compromised. If there really are indeed these quote-unquote sides on the board. And what that shows me is that there, there may be emotions running high and there may be heavy-duty conversations happening, but decisions are being made for our school district, without one side fighting against another. Now with all that being said, clearly the board needs to work on some standards and practice, commonalities understanding both roles and responsibilities. And Rebecca nailed it. I think we need to be starting with these relationships where you know, where was the, what did you want to be when you grew up; what do you want to do over the summer? I mean these conversations that need to be personalized so that you can have these relationships because you’re gonna be a lot less hostile with somebody, if you actually see them as another person and not just somebody who might be against you.
Laura Eden Lang: Yeah, well at the risk of sounding redundant I guess I’m gonna say you guys thank you. I think it’s wonderful to actually see such agreement. The election is where we can see this really began and really resist this talk of making sides and ostracizing each other, but instead coming together. You know we talk about diversity, we talk about building community and this is where it begins. And these are face-to-face conversations together as we meet in the community, as we meet with board meetings, as we meet on committees, as we meet in Yo Yos or Whisk, wherever. There really should not be sides at all, as is implied with the name of a board we come together on a same level-playing field. Seven people to work together. And so I think it starts with each individual as they come on the board saying, you know, I’m ready to listen, I’m ready to give the best of what I have, but also not be easily offended. There’s this wonderful phrase from my childhood that my parents always taught me: to consider others is better than yourself. And I think that’s where it needs to begin on the board, that I consider the other board members better than myself: to listen to them, but also give what I have the best of me with. I think also a lot of this can be alleviated with the committees and boards I’ve served on is, you know, having strong leadership and coming together to make unified priorities. So I’m excited to see what this next step in the board has, as Sunny said, there has been a lot of agreement on the current board, there’s been some flaming balls of fire, but you know I think sometimes those are good. I think when you have a board that always votes in together, I think it kind of indicates another problem that nobody is really talking about the difficult issues. So I applaud them for talking about difficult issues. And now it’s time to talk about difficult issues and to work well together.
Max McComb: Two or three years ago there were a group in the community that talked about the board and said there was just too much agreement on the board. There’s too many 7-0 votes. Too many 6-1 votes. We need more diversity of opinion. We need more discussion, we need more options, we need to hash things out. Okay. Now, interestingly enough, mostly that same group is telling us the board is too divided. Too many for 4-3 votes, too much disagreement. But it is true that almost everybody’s concerned about board conduct. So a few thoughts I guess on that from my perspective. First are my 12 years on the board and there were many times we’ve experienced differences of opinion through my first 12 years.
After McComb was appointed to the school board in 2007, four other board members were appointed between 2013 and 2017. Former board member Nezar Kassem and current board member Lori Larson won seats in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
It’s only been the last two years, that those differences of opinions became what only could be described as toxic, and occasionally embarrassing to our community. I think it’s important to remember each of us is responsible for our own behavior, I’m responsible for mine. I can and should encourage others to model good behavior. But I really can’t control others. I am committed to engaging in discussion in a manner that is respectful. And I want to work with those well and reflect well on our community. As President, the superintendent I have attempted to bring the board, the current board together, we’ve had consultants in twice. And again, here we can only encourage others. We can’t control others. I also want to address, there’s a narrative I hear from time to time with people, the superintendent and the board president agree way too much. Well, first of all, I want you to know that’s not always true. We do, however, tend to work things out behind-the-scenes and not bring items to the table until we are in agreement, or at least mostly agreement. Can you imagine the board president and the board superintendent were all at the time with everything else we’ve got going on? That would be a disaster. Finally, I hear occasionally from members in our community, there’s a narrative going around that I am the problem. First of all, I want you to know I don’t believe that to be true. I’ve been on the board 14 years, president for six, and the problems really have only been around the last two years since the change in the makeup of the board. However, I will share this with you all. I don’t have to be board president. You can elect me back to the board. I don’t need to be president.
The Mahomet-Seymour School board holds a reorganizational meeting annually in May.
It’s not an automatic thing. It’s not like a Supreme Court justice where I’ve got a life appointment. Board members choose the president each and every year. I could be selected by the board as president for another year or two or more. But board members will make that decision. In the end of the board believes it’s better for someone else to lead, and that’s better for our district, than that’s the Board’s decision, and all support that. We have the potential for new leadership coming on our board, and look forward over my next term on the board to do my part to help develop new leadership.
Patrick MacKay: Yeah, I think that um, I think it’s safe to say that a lot of folks across the community, believe that it’s been a challenging couple of years on the board. Folks have said that there’s an absence of trust, respect, common decency. You know, all of that can be overcome. The world’s not at an end. We should be able to engage in good debate discussion and dissent, we should be able to disagree without being disagreeable. Folks have already said it, you know there’s going to be at least three new board members. They’ve never served. I think that’s an opening. That’s an opening for honest exchange of ideas. I think it’s an opportunity to identify the common good. It’s an opportunity to compromise. Wow! Look at that word. It’s not a bad word compromise. It gets things done. And ultimately, that’s what the voters expect. The voters expect the board to come together and get things done. And that’s gonna be more important than ever as the board is going to tackle some various very serious important issues that we’ve already identified. I’ll end with this and it’s kind of similar to what Sunny and Rebecca said. So I grew up outside of DC. And DC used to look like a very different place when it came to politics. When you were elected, you moved with your entire family, to the district. Your family’s engaged with the other families, regardless of what your political affiliation was. You broke bread. You laughed. You cried. You share those experiences. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t do that here. We have no excuses. We live here together. And I would suggest and I would hope, once that we return to normal post-COVID or COVID will be here, but whatever that new normal is going to be, we should be able to get together and break bread and laugh and actually learn about each other outside of the board. Then we can come together, then we can find common good, then we can compromise, then we can fulfill our responsibilities to the voters.
Question: An estimated 15% of American population is dyslexic. Students with dyslexia, often struggle to read, write and spell. How do school board candidates proposed working with the district to ensure these students are being identified properly and supported through evidence-based reading support?
Max McComb: First of all, everyone needs to know the board really doesn’t make decisions about individual student interventions or support provided to individual students. We have professionally-trained staff that does that, professional educators. And we really look to them. and we look to their expertise. We have excellent people in our special education department, and, as evidenced by the fact that people move here because of our special education services. Christine Northrup and her group do a great job. It’s also important to note that that’s the group that’s probably the most short-staffed. Special ed positions are very difficult right now to find people to fill those openings. Of all the areas where we have a hiring shortage, special education that’s the biggest problem. And it’s not only here it’s really all the schools in the area; which is part of the problem we’re competing against all the other schools in the area for a very few numbers of folks to fill a large number of positions. Let’s face it, each of us wants what’s best for our kids. And that’s true to the families that have special needs kids. Things become more complicated as often parents want services for their children, and there’s a qualification process. And while it’s a shame sometimes the student doesn’t qualify for the services, and that’s not the fault of our staff. That’s the way the standards are set up. And there are often strict guidelines when it comes to qualifications for some of those programs that provide support. In the end, I think we need to remember we are a school district with high expectations and high standards. And that certainly extends to our students who require support services, and we need to do our best. I think, just to continue to try to serve those kids with the highest standards, and the best services we can provide.
Patrick MacKay: I would encourage everyone that has an interest in this issue to check out, understood.org it’s an absolutely wonderful site has some absolutely wonderful information. So this is a very important issue. It’s another one of those issues that has come up in conversations both with individuals and groups. Folks have told their own personal stories to us. I think, obviously, the district is committed to early identification, early intervention and early action. I have more questions than answers about this topic. Are we going beyond what is expected or required with child first right? Are we identifying folks as early as possible? Are we intervening as early as possible, so we can head off those consequences that happen when kids are older and we haven’t intervened early enough? Now in terms of dyslexia itself because that’s what that’s what the question was asking about, I think it’s very important to acknowledge one thing first: dyslexia impacts learning but it’s not a problem with intelligence, so, let’s just avoid that stigma right off the bat. There are several options and approaches that are available you can look at structured literacy. So structured literacy is an approach that has shown great benefit to dyslexic students. It relies on implicit instruction to other approaches and programs that we use in the district, you have the 95% group which actually addresses phonics intervention. You also have the Wilson reading system. I’m looking at this because I want to make sure I get this correct. Wilson approach uses the Orton Gillingham approach which actually is proven to be very effective with adolescents. So those are our older students. As a board member, I look forward to sitting down with our specialists our teachers, our educators. To learn more about the approaches that we’re using in the district and also to identify where are areas that we can improve?
Sunny McMurry:This is probably my favorite question because it’s a total teacher question but I won’t answer it as a teacher. I instead want to answer it as a hopeful board member. Max is right, it’s not up to our board members to determine how an individual child is served. And it’s not up to our board members to tell a teacher how they need to determine eligibility that’s actually already established. So, our teachers in our district are using data, as we all should be, to drive their decision-making. We have highly capable special education teachers interventionists and specialists who are going to be working with those children to determine what it is that that child needs and what kind of intervention would help that child. So, it used to be that qualifying for special education services meant that you had to meet a discrepancy model. So it meant that you had to have a certain level of intelligence, I suppose, and then compared to your achievement. And if there was a discrepancy in that you would qualify for services. But now with the way we’ve moved to the multi-tiered systems of support, response to intervention is actually there to catch those kids earlier, make sure kids don’t fall through the cracks. So using data on what’s happening in the classrooms with students how they’re performing on standardized tests and combining that data to figure out what you can do to intervene earlier, is actually, you want to have the goal of getting these kids to independence. So that’s exactly what I would be doing as a board member. I will be looking at the data of our students who are being served either through intervention or special education or any other services, and I would ask our educators, I would ask our Special Education team, how’s this working this data is the data showing that this is making an impact on our kids. And if it’s not making an impact on our kids, what resources can we help you have, how can we support you and making sure that our kids have all of their needs met.
Laura Eden Lang: Thank you, Sunny for saying that because I’m actually with you, this is my favorite question. Just because I have the privilege of working in a special education room for about a year. And I want to stick with what they’ve said as well, too, I’m so thankful that I don’t have to determine all of this. This is why we have our professionals. Christine Northrup and the rest of our special education professionals. But like they said, we are severely understaffed. So I hope that as a district, we’ll be able to come up with some great resources to really support these fine special education educators, as well as getting enough paraprofessionals in the room, so that our professionals, our special educators, can really have their hands free, with the support that they need with paraprofessionals. The other thing is that board member is when these concerns arise as parents bring them in, we get the privilege of working with our professionals to say, ‘Hey, we have a flag up what’s going on here? How can we assist, how can we get families and educators the resources? And in the case of dyslexia specifically here it’s very important. The first thing is not a lot of places, actually identify dyslexia as a disorder yet, which I think is a little behind the times. One in five students have dyslexia. And what is so critical about dyslexia is that it is addressed very quickly. You can tell by the time a child is two and a half to three based on their rhyming skills, and they’re struggling with pronunciation where they’re heading. But I’m getting into details. The issue is that if it’s not identified early, there’s a huge significant difference between if it’s dealt with before, I think it’s third or fourth grade or after, the progress is not as good so I really hope that we can work as a district to give our special educators the support they need and the parents of this year they need to find out where the issues are and how we can support them.
Justin Lamb: Yes, I’ll start off by saying that, Mahomet-Seymour has a reputation for having an excellent education or special education program. And a lot of families have moved here because of that, to get their students enrolled in that program. As a board member, I mean we have to put our trust in our administration and in our, in our special education staff and teachers. We have to, when we get the good ones we got to keep them here, and when we’re hiring new ones we got to go out and we got to get the best possible we can. We got to have conversations with the community. We’ve got to have conversations with parents to find out where the concerns are, and just address those as needed.
Rebecca Richardson: So I’m going to digress just a little bit and try and weave it back into the main thrust of this question. But, you know, earlier we talked about overcrowding and how we should talk about it as not class size but overcrowding in general. Well, I would bring classroom capacity and class size into this answer because our teachers have far, far too many students, and they have for a long time in this district. And I think that part of the early intervention and the meeting students where they are; to provide more access, whether it’s teachers or whether it’s support staff to students so we have an idea where we need to meet them. We need to have a research-based curriculum, much like some of the other folks were talking about. It’s really important to have the best curriculum for the issues that you’re working with. And again, it’s not a matter of, you know too much money, because our obligation is to our students. And so if we have special needs students and we can’t find teachers for them, we have to find them. It’s our obligation is to find those teachers. So if it means raising the salary. It means whatever it means, going out and recruiting them, we have to do better. We should not have those struggles with finding teachers in a tremendously highly sought-after district like Mahomet is. And then finally I guess the point I want to make is more being more proactive with families, communicating, reaching out to families rather than waiting for them to come to you with a problem is really important. I think that was one of the things when I was out speaking with people, that’s something that kind of hit me pretty hard was that you know these, these families are struggling already with kids who really have special issues and they spend more time with them and they spend more money and more resources. So if we can be more proactive to reach out to students, which means more resources, more staff, fewer kids per teacher. I think we can do a better job. Lastly, my point is, again, our obligation is to meet all of our students, not just the easiest ones. And so, I really think that we need to do a better job of, you know, meeting the needs of all of our students.
Question: There are kids that are struggling and we’re seeing more D’s and F’s in the district than we have in past years (due to COVID-19 learning mitigations). And we know that the kids are overwhelmed by falling behind. So, how would you address that, or what are your thoughts on addressing that. And also, I think the question that a lot of people are new to is, do we see a five-day school year next year. How do we bring those kids back emotionally and does that include going back to school five days a week?
Rebecca Richardson: Yeah, I think this is a really good point to bring in the fact that, you know, we are going to have to have a lot of patience and tolerance and desire to again meet kids where they are. I think it’s going to be especially hard moving forward, because we’re going to have some kids who are academically behind; we’re going to have some kids who are emotionally traumatized. So I think that I think that we have our work, certainly our teachers and our staff have their work cut out for them. I think looking at the curriculum, to be able to be sure that we are listening, super closely to students and following their progress and being able to isolate issues and problems as they come up. We may need to put in more staff and more support to be able to, again, provide tutoring, provide opportunities maybe through the summer. I think that there will be positive things that come out of this that teach us that all students are different in their learning process. And so I think that, you know, the kids who are not excelling with virtual learning, we need to identify those. And as far as five days a week next year, I hope so. Because I think that we need to have our kids in school, all the time, five days a week, as long as we can follow safety precautions and make sure that they have the most exposure to their teachers and their learning experiences as they are used to.
Justin Lamb: Okay so, yeah, with COVID we’ve opened avenues for different types of learning with the technology that we have. I will say one thing, fortunately we had technology in place within our school district to be able to do remote. My family’s personal experience, was one where my kids kind of struggled with the e-learning. For one country, we live in the country, so our internet situation is not good. Two, my kids need that social interaction at school. They need to have a more structured day, they need to be guided in what they do. They’re not self-motivated kids. But they’re still great kids. But the answer the question about five day week school, I sure hope so, as well. We need to get back to that. As far as, we don’t know where the state is going to be on that, we don’t know if they are going to mandate remote learning option still, we will have to address that when we find that out. It is my personal belief that we need to have five-day a week school.
Laura Eden Lang: I want to say thank you to our teachers because I’m with Justin, I have three kids that really struggled with e-learning and those teachers are writing me and working with me. So thank you for supporting our kids and then supporting us in the midst of going through your own crisis. I want to address the first, the psychological, emotional component that students are really struggling with. Because there’s also, you know, academics. But it’s true, I mean even as adults, just started going back to the office last week, and it just felt so strange. I had almost had to re-learn, okay how do I do this process in the day. And I’m an adult. And for the kids, they are also struggling emotionally, they’ve had to go through different things that we never experienced before. So what I would love to see in our school district, we have great social workers and great counselors who are there to support them, but per capita,per student, we just don’t have enough. And so a lot of students still try to get appointments, but they just can’t because our amazing emotional support counselors, social workers, just can’t keep up with it. And so we really need to figure out a system to as a social worker send out newsletters, to provide parents with support. We just need more of this wonderful thing and talking about it and being patient with each other. Academically, I think we need to look around at the districts around us and the research what’s coming out: articles that are coming out of the university and really sit and hash through this. What is this going to look through the next stage for our students? So I think it’s creative: tutoring, I think it’s working with parents, so I’m excited to see what the next step is but we need to really crunch this together and not shy away from it.
Sunny McMurry: So the reality is that in our house. The one who liked remote learning the best was the teenager who didn’t have to get dressed to go to school. The others were completely missing their friends and completely missing their teachers on days that they weren’t there. But the reality is that this is not about me and it’s not about my kids. I am very passionate. I hope you have heard this tonight about our kids who are coming from low-income homes. We cannot assume that there are adults, loving adults at home to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, have materials at the ready if they need remote learning materials, make sure that they’re not also on YouTube while they’re also on Google meet. That doesn’t happen in every home. And the reality is that in my world that I live in on a day-to-day basis, I am watching fourth graders care for their younger siblings, because their parents have to work all day. And when it comes to bringing our kids back to school five days a week, I am a 100% yes, that needs to happen. Our kids need to be back at school for so many reasons. We’ve already seen the academic slide from COVID. We’ve already heard that it’s going to take several years to get these kids caught back up: several years that some of our kids don’t have. Our juniors and seniors in high school, let’s help the colleges remediate them. We don’t even have that. So I really think that the sooner we can get our kids back in a system of learning, back in their social setting, we will start seeing those successes.
Patrick MacKay: I think we’re all in agreement here that we’re hoping and praying that we can go back to a five-day school week next fall. As a parent, I would absolutely love that. I would say kind of just share personal photos of my kids. My daughter, I think she could function just fine, she did function with remote learning. My five year old son, who is an absolute firecracker. He needs the structure, even getting half day during the fall, now with getting the full day, geez, thank goodness. I think that you’re going to have to approach this issue long-term. There is no quick fix to getting students caught up. Obviously Sunny just hit the nail on the head. One of the most difficult things is that some kids are going to have longer time to get up to speed than others. I think having a more expansive offering for summer school education and instruction is a great start that the district has. That’s going to have to continue. I think the other folks on the at the table, have already identified that we’re going to have to work with our support staff and our teachers to be creative in providing instruction that will likely need to go above and beyond what is obviously mandated by the curriculum, because these kids deserve as much. It is not their fault. It’s nobody’s fault that we are in this situation because of COVID. Period.
Max McComb: Sunny made that I share her passion, we have to have kids back in our buildings, five days a week.
On Oct. 5, 2020, McComb voted against bringing student back five days a week.
On Jan. 22, 2021, McComb voted to approve a Memorandum of Understanding that keeps Mondays as asynchronous and keeps modified 2020-21 school hours in place.
(McComb continued:) We’ve got to do that for all the reasons she talked about: social-emotional reasons, academic reasons, just living their lives and normalcy in their lives. We need to get that accomplished. Certainly, we’re going to have some issues with learning recovery. The district is working right now to address that. Dr. Rummel is working with teachers and staff to put plans in place. There are, things we’re going to be able to do in classrooms to kind of help bring some of that back. And as we talked about the other night at our board meeting, we’re going to have enhanced Summer school option to help some of our students recover some of the information they need. It’s not going to be a quick fix. The younger kids we’ve learned over the years tend to maybe catch up a little quicker. Where I’m concerned about, but the older kids, we don’t have much time with, they’re going off to college. But we’re gonna do our best to work at all grade levels and try to get kids caught back up. And I just appreciate right now that our staff is already working on this. There’s already thought and plans going into this works. In Mahomet, we always look for ways to get it done, and that’s what we’re going to do. Our teachers are great, our staff is great, and we’re going to figure it out, and we’re going to try to get kids back up to speed.
As any school board member has to contend with, there are financial issues. Throughout this pandemic, and more recently with the perspective of the $1.9 billion referenda going through Congress. We don’t know if we’re gonna be getting more money less money, or how that’s gonna play out. But as a board member. what’s your top financial priority and how are you going to use tax dollars most wisely?
Patrick MacKay: Well I think that’s one of the primary responsibilities of the school board is obviously to be the custodian of the purse. Right. I think that there is widespread uncertainty. At least now we know from the state that the budget for 2021 is going to be flat, so we can’t actually rely on any increase there. I think it’s going to require, low and behold, working together: working together as a board, working together with the administration, working together with the Chief Business Officer, to actually prioritize what needs to be done. I think we’re going to have to do some serious scenario planning to lay out what is possible based on numbers that do come in with respect to different revenue streams. But in terms of priority, I think the priority should be looking at the students. What can we do as a district to put our tax dollars at work to commit to readying our students to getting them back up to speed after a year of lost opportunity, for a situation that is completely not their own doing.
Max McComb: Well I think our first priority is we try to figure this out is we don’t want to go backwards. I’ve been through a couple financial crisis and changes in state funding. We always have people that want to just, you know, all of a sudden we cut everything and downsized staff, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden we’re going backwards and our students don’t need us going backwards. The second priority I think we have to look at is, I always have lived by the philosophy, we need to keep the dollars as close to the students as possible. Okay. That’s one reason our facilities have always lagged because classroom teachers are more important than facilities. Oftentimes, supplies and some of the textbooks are more important than the facilities. So, try to spend the dollars we have as close to the students as possible. We have the lowest tax rate in the county. We are one of the bottom three out of 12 or 13 school districts. We spend the lowest percent on education. As a community long-term we need to look at that. And probably the first chance we’ll have to look at that will be when the community group comes back to us with recommendations on what to do with the junior high. But in the meantime, I think we have to choose carefully. I think you don’t do anything sudden. I’ve never been one to want to panic right out of the gate. We look square in the eye, prioritize figured it out, work our way through it.
Laura Eden Lang: What I love about finances is the numbers don’t lie. You know you can argue over different sets of opinions or ideas but when you look at financial numbers. It’s hard to argue with them because they’re very black and white. That being said, like Max is saying, there’s no need to be afraid of it. When you’re running a district of this size or really any business there’s some sort of risk involved, and it’s understanding how to use that risk, how to use that money for the benefit. And in this case, to the benefit of the students. And as Patrick was saying we’re really stewards. The board is really charged with representing constituents, taxpayers and using the money as wisely as possible. And so I’ve been so grateful that our district keeps the money as close as possible and I don’t know entirely I would love to sit with our chief financial officer and the rest of the board and really asked a lot of questions and throw out different ideas, but I would suspect one of the top priorities is going to be facilities at this point. Because students when I meet with him say we’re sitting on the floor of the high school because there’s not enough furniture because it was redistributed (another story). But, teachers are crying out and saying, I don’t have enough room in my class I have to redistribute. So I think at this point has been one of our top priorities.
Sunny McMurry: I want to touch on what Laura just said. Our chief School Business Officer, Heather Smith and never had a chance to talk with her sit with her even have a phone call with her, she’s phenomenal. She has a really nice way of explaining things, and I have a little bit of background in Educational Administration, so the school finance part isn’t completely foreign to me, but it’s sometimes really hard to understand, especially if you don’t have an understanding of how, there were certain buckets for funds and funds have to be used in a certain way. She’s phenomenal at helping just anybody understand what actually happened to school finances. So I would trust her to come to us and say, here are some things that we really need to consider financially and here are some things that we don’t need to worry about as much. You know for example she was projecting that we would have a 20% drop in sales tax revenue and it’s actually only been something like seven. So, we’re in a much better position than what we even predicted ourselves to be. I agree with everybody that the number one priority with spending in our district needs to be what is going to serve our students best. I have a very unique privilege of having a class size of 18 first graders during my first year of teaching, and that was due to a grant that came from the federal government. It disappeared after a couple of years, but it is unbelievably different teaching 18 first graders, compared to teaching 23 first graders, or 28, fifth graders who are a little stickier than first graders. So, when you are looking at where we can put our money. If we can start looking closely at what we can do to those class sizes. That would be my priority.
Rebecca Richardson: Yes, and I am not going to pretend to know nearly as much about this as Max does because he’s lived it. And I have no doubt that he has done his best to be a good steward of the money that we have. I do have some questions about our finances, and I think many people I’ve talked to in the district also have those questions. You know, I think this is probably, if not the hardest, certainly one of the hardest things that you’re held accountable for on the school board. And so I think that something that I noticed in looking and studying, some of the data and statistics, is that if we are not the lowest, we’re one of the lowest maybe the second lowest in terms of per student funding that we provide for our students and their education. So I would like to understand that and why that is I mean I know that we don’t want to raise taxes so I’m sure that they go hand in hand. There are some red flags though that I wonder about and I want to know more about like: when I looked at the average of the last five years we’ve averaged negative $500,000 in the financial report at the end of the year compared to our budget. And so I want to understand that, ISBE has had us in early warning for two years and now they have us on watch. Again, Heather, she tried desperately to explain that. And, you know, it’s hard to hear online so I want to have a better understanding of why we’re sitting there. And I guess lastly, I think we need to look at this from a long-term plan perspective, and try to figure out why you know we’ve got a budget that’s second to only Champaign-Urbana in the school in the county, and we’ve got to figure out how to spend those dollars as wisely as we can and definitely class size. And, you know, trying to to make sure that as much money gets to the students as possible is critical, and that they would be my priority.
Justin Lamb: Yes, absolutely all agree with students have to be our top priority, with our dollars that we have. I’ll say that, Mahomet-Seymour has a history of having outstanding financial management from the dollars that we’ve had to work with. We’ve had to get creative sometimes. I think it’s turned out for the best.
The following data is pulled from the annual Illinois State Board of Education Financial Profile. Data is taken from 2006, one year before Max McComb joined the board. The dates run through the Great Recession and Champaign County property tax delays. The rankings, from highest to lowest are: Recognition, Review, Early Warning and Watch.
[doc id=324304]
MAHOMET-SEYMOUR CUSD 3: IAR. (2020, October). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=trends&source2=achievementgapiar&Districtid=09010003026
District financial reports can be found at: https://www.mahometseymour.org/o/district/browse/91402.
(Justin Lamb continued:) A lot of those times, we can’t always count on the state funding that we’re owed. And, Heather did a really good job explaining that the other night. I was very impressed with how she explained that and I definitely want to have more conversations with her to help me understand better how school finances work. It’s obviously this different than a family’s budget finances that they get to work with. You’re pulling money from different pots, some can be spent in some areas and can’t be spent in other areas so definitely would like to get with her on some of those issues. I mean, bottom line we just have to figure out to manage our money. The best way that we can with what we’re working with. So, keeping the students that the focus is there again what we’re here for.
