Unruly school board meetings among the hot-button topics highlighted in annual education report

Unruly public behavior at school board meetings is among the key issues highlighted in newly released polling data from the fifth annual State of Education Report released Thursday by the Illinois Education Association.

“Fake news and disinformation are fueling fears, and that’s pitting school communities against one another, often over something that isn’t even true,” IEA President Kathi Griffin said.

School board members in Illinois serve without pay, Griffin said, and they did not sign up to be berated in an environment that they’re trying to improve.

“To have people oftentimes from outside the community come in and disrupt the meetings in a way that does not allow our school boards to be able to do the job they were elected to do — it’s vitriolic,” Griffin said. “I am pleased that at least 66% (of poll respondents) say that’s not how school boards should be run.”

One in 5 Illinois residents said there has been fighting, yelling or contention at their local school board meetings, according to data collected between Jan. 19 and Jan. 24 by pollsters Jill Normington of Normington-Petts, a Democrat, and former Illinois GOP chairman Pat Brady of Next Generation Strategies.

Of 1,000 residents surveyed, 44% said they have heard about the fighting, yelling or contention at school board meetings, and 66% said they don’t approve of that behavior at the meetings.

Linda Burke, a longtime resident of Hinsdale High School District 86, where there have been several heated board meetings on topics such as critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, said there’s a fine line between disagreeing with someone and disrespecting them.

“I’m not bothered by individual public commenters, but I am bothered anytime there is a crowd of people yelling when others have the floor,” said Burke, who frequently attends the meetings held on the second Thursday of each month. “That impresses me as the behavior of a mob and interrupting speakers with shouts and catcalls and insults. And this has happened at D86.”

During Thursday’s virtual news conference announcing the data, Griffin also spoke about poll takers’ concerns regarding shortages of teachers and education support staff, with survey results showing 81% of respondents saying students will perform worse as a result of the deficit.

“It is at a crisis level, and it is only making jobs in public education more difficult,” Griffin said. “Educators continue to work tirelessly with the goal of success, both academically and social-emotionally, for each of their students. The educator shortage has caused this goal to be difficult to attain as we continue to recover from the many issues the pandemic has caused.”

The IEA poll also asked about critical race theory, with 50% of the residents surveyed opposing a law that bans teaching the conceptual framework that considers the impact of historical laws and social structure on present-day racial inequalities.

Griffin said part of what feeds the commotion surrounding CRT in schools is a lack of information — 50% of the 1,000 people surveyed said teaching CRT should be banned, even though it hasn’t actually been taught.

“When people say, ‘We should not teach CRT’ my first question is, ‘What do you think CRT is?” Griffin said. “Because I know critical race theory is a theory that is taught at a graduate level in college. We do not teach theories in our pre-K-12 system. It’s really important that people are asked that question.”

Of the respondents in the survey, 62% were white, 15% were Black, 15% were Hispanic and 5% were Asian.

Another question on the IEA poll was whether people support students being taught about slavery and racism as part of American history.

“Oftentimes people think if you are teaching about racism, you are telling people that they are racist, which is not true. What you are sharing is our history,” Griffin said. “Learning what has happened in the past and the errors that were made will allow us to not make those errors in the future — knowledge is so powerful.”

The results showed that 77% of respondents favored teaching about slavery in the U.S. and its impacts while 72% favored teaching about racism.

“What politician gets 72% on anything right? I was pleased to see the results for that question,” Griffin said.

Griffin noted that the IEA was not just focusing on people who have children in schools but surveyed a diverse set of residents.

Briana Bill, a La Grange resident who lives in the Lyons Township High School district, said she doesn’t have children in the school system. But in the last two years, she’s heard more about school board issues than she has since moving to La Grange in 1996.

“I learned that board meetings are aired on Facebook, so I got on a couple,” Bill said. “They were loud and there were people standing in the back — groups that looked, I thought, a bit threatening for La Grange, at least.”

Bill, now retired, ran public meetings when she worked for the local Environmental Protection Agency.

“I was the guy at the front that got yelled at,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just so not cool. We have to find ways of getting community input that doesn’t result in yelling. It’s usually not very effective. And based on my experience, people who are mad about something are the ones that (attend).”

Bill said she felt compelled to get informed ahead of the April 4 school board elections because the stakes are higher.

“School board members can potentially become representatives and senators at the state or the federal level and we need a good candidate pool to pick from when we’re looking at those positions,” she said.

Thomas Bertrand, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards said the pandemic launched a lot of tense school board conversations about masking and COVID-19 restrictions.

Bertrand said some pockets of the state saw more combative meetings than others on a variety of hot-button topics, which derailed actual efforts to improve school districts.

“I think sometimes people feel frustrated that they aren’t being heard and, frankly, the local school board meeting is one place you can be heard,” he said. “You might not feel like you can be heard in Washington, you might not feel like you can be heard in Springfield — but you may feel like you can be heard locally.”

zsyed@chicagotribune.com