Eight candidates came to the Champaign Unit 4 school board meeting on Tuesday, April 9, ready to interview for two open seats.
Because board members Amy Armstrong and Betsy Holder were absent in protest, there weren’t enough members to hold the meeting.
“It’s disappointing that a meeting isn’t happening today. I certainly hope that whatever the issues are with moving this process forward can be worked out very quickly. Because we need to get back to the work of the kids and the staff and the community,” said candidate Sam Banks, the former CEO of the Don Moyer Boys and Girls Club in Champaign.
Unit Four Board president Gianina Baker asked the candidates to respond to interview questions by email. She says the board has until May 6 to fill the first vacancy left by Jamar Brown’s resignation and May 19 to fill the one left by Mark Thies’ resignation.
Why did Amy Armstrong and Betsy Holder decide to cancel the meeting?
At Monday’s regular meeting, Armstrong and Holder said they would not join the interviews, due to a toxic culture on the school board and an unfair selection process for candidates. They want the Champaign-Ford County regional superintendent of schools to select the new members instead.
“When you’re looking at the candidates and thinking, ‘Who’s going to be on my side,’ that’s the wrong spirit to go into this with. That’s the spirit I was looking at it in, and it’s time to stop and hand it over to the regional superintendent,” Holder said.
26 people applied for the two seats that were left vacant due to early resignations. Each member nominated three of the candidates. 11 total were asked to interview, and one declined.
Armstrong said she asked the board to interview all candidates and rank them instead.
Member Bruce Brown said the board has used the nomination method in the past. Without naming names, he said there has been “an abhorrent year-long faultfinding campaign that has yet to produce any material impropriety.”
He also said much of this change has happened since the board presidency switched. Armstrong was board president until Baker was elected in a split vote last May.
“All of a sudden, long-standing practices and procedures, which were allowable and accepted without issue from the community, now everything is under question. Everything. Not from a place of genuine inquiry or clarification, but from an accusatory [place] and assumption of bad faith,” Brown said.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Regional Superintendent Gary Lewis said by phone that he believes he is required by law to wait to step in until the board exhausts its 60-day process. He said the state’s attorney is looking into the question.
“I honestly think it is the board’s job to pick, but if they can’t come to an agreement, that’s why the code was written,” Lewis said.
Emily Hays is a reporter for Illinois Public Media.
