Normal officials hope McLean County Unit 5 can help improve race relations in the town.
City Manager Mark Peterson told a joint committee of town and school officials Tuesday he hopes the district will help the town push that effort, which it intensified this month with the publication of a study on how to improve Normal Police Department procedures.
"Most African-Americans went to school, for many years, with an African-American teacher who understood them as an individual," said Chemberly Cummings, the first black Normal City Council member and a committee member. "Now, we have teachers who are coming out of suburban or rural areas never ever seeing an African-American until they step foot into the classroom."
She said that dynamic can lead to a culture of mistrust between students and authority figures that follows students after they leave school.
"They're already developed a mindset about police long before they've come to this larger interaction with law enforcement," Cummings said, "It's both our responsibilities to make sure all of our children feel welcome. ... We can develop true diversity and inclusion plans, not just window dressing."
The district is "looking at the idea of how do we integrate diversity training" and working to make its staff and administrators as diverse as its student body, said Unit 5 Superintendent Mark Daniel.
He said he's seen the benefits of diversity training up close, through one of his daughters who was a student teacher for Chicago Public Schools.
"They went first to understand the community, then they went into the classrooms. ... She had no fear walking into a classroom or walking around Chicago."
"Because she had that kind of training, she looks through a different lens — I'm treating this (as), I see no color. I just see a student, I see a need, I see I'm there to be an adult who's there to assist.'"
Daniel said officials also need to consider "how are we going to bring people of color to our community."
That was part of a wide-ranging discussion as the committee met for the first time. Cummings, council member R.C. McBride and Peterson represented the town; board members Jim Hayek and Mike Trask joined Daniel for the district, which hosted the meeting.
The next meeting is expected to be in late November or early December at Uptown Station. The town will host.