School board attendance in East St. Louis has dropped since the COVID pandemic began

During the COVID-19 pandemic, local school boards across the country have been tasked with working with administrators virtually to make decisions and plans to educate students under unprecedented circumstances.

In East St. Louis School District 189, participation of some board members has fallen off dramatically, even as they’ve been confronted with hard choices that mitigate educational needs against the safety of students and faculty.

Since March, the District 189 board as a whole has missed an average of more than one out of every four meetings.

In 2019, School Board President RC Clark and Vice President Lonzo Greenwood each attended 90% of meetings. Between March and November though, Clark missed five out of eleven meetings, and Greenwood missed six.

In at least one virtual meeting conducted over Zoom this fall, Superintendent Art Culver said he was receiving messages from Greenwood saying he was trying to log in to the meeting, but wasn’t able to.

Neither Clark nor Greenwood responded to email requests for interviews sent Dec. 10.

The district shared a statement with the Belleville News-Democrat, saying that while some board meetings required rescheduling, all monthly meetings were still held.

“We appreciate our board members’ commitment to continue their service and responsibilities during these challenging times,” the district’s statement said.

The Illinois Association of School Boards said it doesn’t have specific guidance for how many meetings board members have to attend — neither does District 189’s board policy manual.

Board member LaKeisha Adams missed three out of the 11 meetings between March and November. She said she intentionally missed the meetings to boycott the district’s use of a teleconferencing system to conduct virtual meetings. Without being able to see the board members voting, she said it wasn’t appropriate for transparency or “a process of good government.”

“How do you prove that LaKeisha Adams is the one voting?” she said.

The district switched to Zoom to host its virtual meetings in August, and the meetings are streamed on YouTube. Adams has attended every meeting since July. In the 2019 calendar year, she missed two.

Life outside of school board meetings during the pandemic has been an adjustment for everyone, Adams said.

Adams and Greenwood are up for re-election in April, along with Treasurer Victoria Clay and Member Kinnis Williams, Sr. The latter two each have attended all but one meeting since March, and their attendance rates in 2019 were the same or better.

School board members have previously been removed from office in Illinois for poor attendance, but it’s rare, and the attendance rate is typically much lower than anyone in East St. Louis has. In 2018, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark reported a Lyons School District 103 school board member was booted after attending only six of the 25 meetings held that year.