Community members look to new U-46 chief to nudge settlement talks

In the past four years, the value of the dollar has plummeted. The price of gas has risen by more than $2.

New world leaders have been elected; battles won and lost.

Still, from a number of Elgin Area School District U-46 community members' vantage points, time has stood still.

"Services still aren't being provided and things aren't getting done," said George Irizarry, chairman of Elgin's Latino Political Action Team. "And taxpayers are still footing the bill."

During the spring and summer of 2004, Irizarry's group, concerned about the racial implications of the school district's newly approved school boundary map, met with district leaders to voice their concerns.

So did a group of parents known as Focusing on Children's Universal Success (FOCUS), who feared the district's new system denied all students a fair shot at success.

Despite months of meetings, some with attorneys present, the boundary map was instituted. And U-46 ended any negotiations with community groups.

A racial bias lawsuit was filed against the district by five Elgin families in February 2005.

"I think plaintiffs were pushed into a corner," Elgin Mayor Ed Schock said. "What would have been the harm in allowing more time for discussion, to keep talking?"

The lawsuit claims that the new boundary system violated the rights of black and Hispanic U-46 students by placing them in older, more crowded schools; forcing them to ride buses longer and more often than their white peers; and providing them with inferior educational opportunities.

It is the first desegregation claim targeting an Illinois school system since Champaign schools faced similar allegations in 2000, just as Rockford schools did in 1989 and Chicago schools in 1980.

Representing the Elgin families are Futterman and Howard, a Chicago law firm that fought desegregation battles in Chicago, Rockford, Champaign and Freeport.

Representing the district are Hogan and Hartson, the Washington, D.C.-based former firm of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, and Chicago-based Franczek Sullivan.

The lawsuit - still in its early stages - has cost U-46 taxpayers more than $4.6 million.

"Four years later, what has been done?" Irizarry asked. "(Minorities) are still being bused further. They're in more mobile classrooms. They have higher dropout rates. The numbers speak for themselves."

Schock, a U-46 graduate and former Coleman Elementary School principal, says the long, drawn-out battle "hurts. U-46 faces enough battles with its image and its perception without adding things like this. There's nothing that can't be resolved if people sit down and talk in good faith."

Elgin attorney Kerry Kelly, a former FOCUS member and U-46 mother of four, calls U-46 officials' failure to address the lawsuit "incredibly frustrating."

"The district is letting all this money be haphazardly spent when they have an obligation to try and settle," she said.

School board President Ken Kaczynski said Monday that board members "have always been open to the idea of settlement."

Still, official talks haven't happened since 2004, before the lawsuit was filed.

Federal Judge Robert W. Gettleman's Friday decision to grant class-action status to the lawsuit significantly increases the number of Hispanic and black students who would receive compensation - a decision, Irizarry and Kelly hope, that may spur the district to entertain more serious thoughts of settlement.

"If nothing has made the district come to the table, this (class-action ruling) should," she said.

If the court rules in favor of the Elgin families, U-46 would now be forced to institute districtwide remedies - affecting upward of 20,000 minority students instead of the 13 named plaintiffs. The district will also likely have to pick up at least a portion of the Elgin families' legal fees.

U-46 Superintendent Jose Torres "needs to step in and make the tail wag the dog," Irizarry said.

"He needs to be the one to ask what is it that we can do to resolve these issues - to bring both parties to the table and try and hash out these issues."

Torres, who comes to U-46 from Chicago Public Schools, dealt firsthand with court intervention as a result of the Corey H. special education lawsuit.

Torres said he also dealt with class-action settlements in school districts in Anne Arundel County, Md., and San Jose, Calif.

"It kind of hangs over you a little bit," he said, of the court ordered supervision and documentation of services. "We were focused on doing the work, but a lot of effort had to go to documenting that work."

Torres maintains that the racial bias lawsuit will not affect his daily life as superintendent.

"In terms of how the lawsuit affects the work that I'm doing," it really doesn't," Torres said. "The plan that I had laid out - it certainly will be looking at the lawsuit and what it might mean, but it doesn't affect my day-to-day operations. I have to continue to reach out, to engage the different segments of the community. If that has some kind of outcome on the lawsuit, great. But in regard to the lawsuit, I have to be guided by the board and their attorneys."