Kane County Reporter

Oak Park District 97 Climate and Culture Coach Maggie Cahill has no doubts about the impression she wants to leave on the school board when it comes to the critical race theory curriculum the board is now debating.

“We don't want to let kids draw their own conclusions,” Cahill said, though she has no issue expressing where she stands in the debate, recently asserting “all schools are rooted in white supremacy.”

Try as they might, Cahill argues to date, authorities haven’t been able to change much about that.  

“For the lessons themselves, the standards were developed by Learning for Justice, developed  by a diverse group of teachers,” she said. “The lessons were covered by eight different identities, race and ethnicity, religious ability, class, immigration, gender and sex identity, bullying and bias rights and activism,” she said.  "The question we often get is how that is different from what we’re already doing in Second Step. Second Step is a district wide social, emotional learning program implemented years ago. There is some overlap, but really what learning for justice does is directly target these issues.”

Cahill isn’t the only one convinced that change needs to come.

Veteran state senator and current GOP candidate for governor Darren Bailey has vowed to fix the “poisoned atmosphere” many of his supporters see as having come about in schools across the state stemming from “culturally responsive" learning standards set forth by the Illinois State Board of Education.

Now serving the 55th District, Bailey has portrayed himself as an everyman dedicated to unifying as many voters as he can around principles common to all of them.

“Far too long, citizens of Illinois have been left without a voice,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. “People in Illinois have been divided. We’ve been used. We’ve been mocked. We’ve been marginalized. People in Illinois have been ignored based on their race. They’ve been ignored based on their class. Their ZIP Code. Or by special interests.”