Chambana Sun

The Rantoul City school district hears a presentation on a proposed alternative school in the district.

“Are they a student that can't be in a classroom,” DeAndre Henderson, assistant principal of J.W. Eater School, said during the meeting. “Because later on in life, we're going to call that person vocal and boisterous and we're going to say they speak their mind or they are strong and opinionated. So these are things that sometimes in a bigger, larger traditional educational environment can be disruptive to a classroom. But that doesn't mean that kid is disruptive. So, we have to look at the system and change the system to be able to meet our students' needs. And that's what I think we could do with this alternative school.”

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

At their January 19th school board meeting, district officials from Rantoul City discussed the potential of an alternative school in the district. Assistant Principal at JW Eater DeAndre Henderson, who is also the district equity facilitator, presented the idea to the board. He explained that since the students returned from online schooling during the covid pandemic, they have experienced a lot of issues. Students are showing much higher levels of disruptive behavior due to mental health stress and the vast majority are underachieving academically, showing skills multiple grade levels below where they should be. Along with the teacher shortage and current overall community culture, the learning environment in the district is highly stressed.

The board also discussed a donation from Barry Little Literacy for the district’s elementary schools for K-2 level books.

The proposed creation of a new alternative school would eliminate the need to transfer students to an ROE safe school and decrease the number of suspensions and student withdrawals to homeschool in the district. In the 2021-22 school year, 34 students between 6th and 8th grade were suspended for at least five days from JW Eater. The Bulldogs RISE alternative school, Responsive Individualized Student Education, will focus on giving each student exactly what they need, even if it doesn’t support a traditional school focus or active learning for the time being.

The board will meet again at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Robert D. Little board room at 400 East Wabash Avenue.

The proposal is to start operations in this school in the fall of the 2023-2024 school year. They want to have around 60 students from grades 5-8, and it would require 12.5 staff members to be fully staffed. The district would have to lease a building in Rantoul. Students can enter the program either through transfers and placements by other staff in other buildings, or by application should they decide they want a different learning environment. For a student to exit the program they will have to have at least one semester in the program and will be determined for dismissal on a case-by-case basis. The board was in favor of proceeding with this as they have exhausted all their efforts and do not want their students to fall away.