Kankakee School Board race: More Q&A from candidates debate

Below is a sample of questions and answers from the seven candidates who participated in Tuesday’s Kankakee School Board debate hosted by the Kankakee County Branch of the NAACP.

Topics covered include the school district’s budget, competency based education and chronic absenteeism.

See other debate questions answered in our previous story at shawlocal.com/daily-journal.

Candidates include incumbents Jess Gathing Jr., Tracy Verrett and Darrell Williams as well as newcomers Reginald Bell, Dajon Casiel and Susan Lopez; all six are vying for four available four-year terms.

Cynthia Veronda, a recent board appointee and write-in candidate for an unexpired two-year term, also participated in the debate, while her opponent, Kathy Yancy Smith, did not participate. Smith told the Daily Journal she could not attend the debate because of work.

Participants fielded a range of questions from panelists and audience members during the two-hour debate.

Question and answer

Question: The school district is currently undergoing a forensic audit looking at spending for the Youth Empowerment Program. Those results aren’t available yet, but what do you believe is the role of the school board in overseeing financial decisions? What areas of the budget would you prioritize?

Cynthia Veronda: “We’re not here to micromanage the district... But, we need to ask those questions of the people who are in charge of writing grants, receiving funds back from grants.

“So, it starts with the superintendent. She has a team of assistant superintendents under her. She has coordinators, directors, building administrators. The accountability has to be from the top to each layer. We know ultimately, we are monitoring our superintendent. …

“So there’s where our responsibility lies, is making sure the superintendent is doing her job, and that she is monitoring everyone she has assigned to assess and monitor each of our budgetary parts of our district.”

Tracy Verrett: “I think that we just need to have transparency and ask questions, as Ms. Veronda says, ask more questions, and we need to have follow-up and follow through.

“So, we ask a question about something, we need to make sure that we follow through about those questions.

“We get a lot of information in a month’s time, and we just need to be more intentional about the follow-up and the follow through and holding our superintendent accountable for the questions that we ask, and bringing the information back in a timely fashion.”

Darrell Williams: “I think it all boils down to accountability. The superintendent and her assistant superintendents and the business office is in charge. Their job is to give us the correct information so we can act on it.

“I think we need to be a little more focused on finances. I think when it comes to finances, I think it would be beneficial for the board to get more accurate information. I just think we need to follow through when we ask a question. ...

“It needs to get back to us in a reasonable amount of time so we can be informed. It’s hard to be informed when you’re waiting on information. … That’s the only way we can monitor things, depending on the people who are supposed to give us information so we can do what we are supposed to do."

Reginald Bell: “One of the first things I think should be prioritized in the budget is teachers — getting certified teachers.

“I want to piggyback on what Ms. Verrett said as far as accountability of the superintendent, trickling on down to ensure that everything [with] the budget is, I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed. We need to make sure everything adds up, to the point we are doing what we are supposed to do. …

“We have to make sure that our schools are taken care of, to the point where we don’t have to be worrying about forensic audits and things like that. It has to be an accountability thing.”

Dajon Casiel: “I believe, agreeing with what everybody else says, it’s an accountability piece. That us as a board, we hold the superintendent accountable as much as possible, making sure that our budget and our finances are being spent properly in all the right places. So, as Mr. Bell said, we don’t have to have these audits.”

Jess Gathing Jr.: “It’s about somebody being accountable. I’ve been in finance for 12 years. Whatever they send to us is what we see, and that’s what we have.

“It’s unfortunate that we are in the situation that we’re in, but it’s about trust, and it’s about accountability, and it’s about transparency.”

Susan Lopez: “I think as a board member, we have a responsibility for approving the budget, making sure the budget is in alignment with the goals of the district and the expectations of what we want from our district.

“And then we also have a responsibility of oversight of the expenditures, so we need to be able to be asking the right questions, ask questions for clarification, make sure our financial statements are easy to understand, because we have a responsibility to our stakeholders and everybody in the community.

“And I think that if financial statements are easy to understand and we’re able to share them with transparency to our stakeholders, then we have that responsibility as well.”

Question: In a recent article, Superintendent Teresa Lance said the district was not in compliance with the state of Illinois’ competency based education [CBE] waiver due to having instructors (instead of certified teachers) in special education classrooms. If elected or re-elected, how would you combat these issues?

Jess Gathing Jr.: “First of all, what happened to us with CBE was, we didn’t follow through with what was given to us with CBE. As you said, in special ed, there wasn’t supposed to be CBE in special ed, and we didn’t do a good job as a district in terms of following through with [following the guidelines] given to us.

“Going forward, in special ed, special ed will be one of the main departments that this district focuses on because it means a lot to our district, and it means a lot to our kids. …

“I think when CBE was new to us, we had trust that we were given the right information and that we were doing the right thing. The CBE waiver for us in terms of hiring the substitute teachers or the other teachers that we had, we used it because there was no other teachers available and that’s what we had to do.”

Susan Lopez: “I would say that we would have to go back and look at what we were not in compliance with, figure out how to get into compliance, and then make sure that we’re doing checks and balances to make sure we’re following everything that is out there and how it should be run. …

“It comes back to understanding what it means to be in compliance, and holding accountable and understanding what that looks like, and making sure the superintendent and the school and the board is following and keeping things in compliance.”

Cynthia Veronda: “Well, the shortage in special ed is the most critical area of the teacher shortage across the country. The one step that we can do in our district is for the certified teachers that we have, would be to encourage and possibly fund our teachers to get their LBS1 endorsement, so this would be an endorsement on top of their certification that would allow them to teach students who have special ed needs identified.

“Another thing would be to host special ed student teachers and give them the support they need. We know that that’s one of the greatest ways to hire new teachers. …

“We have to ask the difficult questions of the superintendent and those she leads to make sure we are getting honest answers so we can make honest decisions and cast our votes accordingly.”

Tracy Verrett: “Special ed is one of my passions, and the shortage in special ed is sad. It’s really sad. We just really need to do our best to try to recruit people to work in special ed.

“We often think about the regular classrooms, but the special education department lacks the most as far as certified teachers, and it’s a requirement, actually, to have certified teachers for special ed students.

“So with the shortage that we have, it’s really hard to find people to work in that department. It’s challenging, and I do feel that if we do a better job of recruitment ... if we can do that, we can do a better job with staying in compliance.”

Darrell Williams: “I would like to say, there is a shortage with teachers for the special ed department. We have tried to recruit. We went to fairs. We’ve done everything; there’s just a shortage of them. You can’t hire somebody that’s not there, so what we have to do is try to figure out a way to bring people in the special ed department here.

“Maybe, a little bit more pay or recruiting them out of school, I don’t know. But that is not really a board decision, that’s a superintendent decision on who she hires. We just approve the hires.

“But I think it’s a recruitment issue. It does need to happen, but honestly, from being in HR, it’s just not a lot of people out there for us to hire with that special ed endorsement. So we’ve got to figure out a way to find people to fill the positions.”

Reginald Bell: “The first place I would start is just, as a board member, accountability. Accountability from our superintendent, and give her the resources and give her the support to make sure that everything is up to par, that we are following all the rules that are stated for our district and for our schools.”

Dajon Casiel: “I would have to agree with Mr. Bell on the accountability piece. As a board, we are holding our superintendent accountable in that way of making sure that we have everything that we need for that.”

Question: According to the Illinois School Report Card, 46% of the Kankakee School District 111 students are chronically absent. What recommended policy language might you consider to encourage improved student attendance?

Cynthia Veronda: “I don’t know that it’s policy that’s going to get students to come to school. I think we started to see a slide after COVID. We got into remote learning. We had a lot of days that are off school. [We were] missing that five-day coherence of education sequence that is needed.

“I think it really is more about getting kids to want to come to school because the kids are engaged in their learning, they are engaged with teachers and the support staff that support them. I do think our primary centers, because we do move around, has really taken away from the cohesiveness that we had in our schools ...

“So I think it’s more working on get the kids who want to come to school, taking away some of the detrimental things such as allowing them to be remote learning when they need to be engaged.”

Tracy Verrett: “I feel the same way. As a student, I didn’t necessarily want to come to school, but my mom made me. And so, like she said, it’s not just one piece to that. There’s a lot of things.

“Whether you want to go to school or not, parents need to know you have to come to school. So there’s a lot of pieces, a lot of factors to that, and I don’t think we can solve that with just focusing on one thing. There’s a lot of things we need to do to make that happen.”

Darrell Williams: “I think K-4, K-5, the attendance level is higher. I think we have to engage the students as they get older. … I think we need to find a way to hold the parents responsible and accountable to get their kids to the school on time.

“I don’t think there’s a policy on earth we could [adopt] to get our kids to come to school without parent support. I don’t think it’s really a policy issue. I think it’s a parental issue. That’s something I don’t think we as a board can do or handle.

“We can have truant officers put pressure on the parents to get them to school, and I think that’s pretty much the only way we can do it.”

Reginald Bell: “Me coming up in school, when you missed a lot of school, they’re knocking at your door, the truancy officers. I don’t know if they still do that because of policies and things like that, but that needs to be happening.

“Accountability needs to fall back on the parents. Parents are at work and kids are not going and things like that, they still need to have some type of support there to make sure these kids are getting to school, because school is very important.

“Being there is important. If you’re not there, you can’t learn. And they fall more and more back if they don’t get to school. So we got to find some type of way to get these kids back to school every day, five days a week.”

Dajon Casiel: “The most important part of it would be on the parents. Although I had a willingness to go to school, my mama didn’t play that. It was just as simple as that. You’re getting up and you’re going to school.

“So I think there needs to be, as far as our parents, better encouraging our students why school is important and having them in the buildings.”

Jess Gathing: “We’ve seen the numbers, and whose problem is it? It’s partially our problem, and it’s partially a parental problem in terms of getting the kids to school.

“There are people out knocking on doors to try to get the kids to come back, but it’s a parental problem and it’s a problem we have to deal with in terms of getting our kids back into schools. It’s going to take all of us to get that job done.”

Susan Lopez: “I would agree. I think it’s going to take all of us to get the job done. I don’t think a policy is going to fix the problem.

“One thing would be the mobility and changing schools for kids all the time. Have them have a sense of belonging to a school and getting to know the administrators and the teachers.

“I think, just like you want to make your district a place where people want to come to work, I think you need to make the schools a place where kids want to come to school.”