Vol. IV No. 38 Major Stone Park fire, PAGE 3
Black history course now D209 graduation requirement Administrators estimate course to cost $300K, board calls for community innput
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
theVillageFreePress.org
Tour de Proviso coming in Oct., PAGE 7
James Leuthe, 35, opened his 13th Boost Mobile store in Maywood last week. The businessman said that he was drawn to the area, in part, due to his fraternity. Read more on page 6.
Shanel Romain
By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
During a regular meeting on Sept. 8, the Proviso Township High Schools District 209 school board voted unanimously in favor of adding a Black history course to the curriculum that all students will be required to take before graduating. Administrators said the new course will cost an estimated $300,000 to implement, which includes an estimated $240,000 to hire three more teachers and $60,000 to buy new textbooks. Dr. Nicole Howard, D209’s assistant superintendent for Academics, Student and Family Services, said she anticipates the course launching sometime in the summer of 2021, with full implementation set to start in August 2021. The graduation requirement would apply to the class of 2022 and beyond. The measure has been under consideration by the board and administration since the 2019-20 school year. Last year, the Illinois General Assembly passed HB 4346, which requires that Black history be taught in every public elementary and high school in the state. The law also requires all students to study the material before graduating high school. Back then, there was a debate between D209 board members and administrators about how to interpret the law and the feasibility of creating a separate Black history course. See BLACK HISTORY COURSE on page 8
As census nears end, workers hone in on response rates Census response rates lowest in Stone Park, Melrose Park, Maywood By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
With the U.S. Census Bureau’s Sept. 30 deadline for winding down census operations approaching, area census outreach organizers are ramping up their efforts to increase self-response rates throughout Proviso Township. As of Sept. 10, according to the Census Bureau’s Self-Response Rates Map, the self-response rate in Illinois was 70 percent while the national self-response rate was around 66 percent. In Cook County, the self-response rate was around 66 percent, as well. In Proviso Township, the self-response
rate was 72 percent, down so far from the last two censuses. In 2000 and 2010, Proviso’s self-response rate was 77 percent and 76 percent, respectively. Stone Park, Melrose Park and Maywood have the lowest self-response rates in Proviso Township, at 59 percent, 61 percent and 62 percent, respectively, as of Sept. 10. In Maywood and Melrose, just 40 percent of those responses were completed over the internet. In Stone Park, roughly half of responses were completed over the internet. Sheila Wesonga, Maywood’s grant administrator who heads up the village’s census outreach initiatives, said she wants to increase the village’s self-response rate to 75 percent before the Sept. 30 deadline. “Each week we have major events,” Wesonga said during an outreach event on Sept. 5 in Maywood. She said that she and other outreach workers and volunteers will be targeting
Maywood’s hardest to count census tracts until the census is scheduled to wrap up at the end of this month. With a self-response rate of 54 percent, tract 8173 in the village has the lowest rate of all six of its census tracts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, tract 8173 — located between the railroad tracks and Madison, and between South 15th and South 9th avenues — is the poorest census tract in the village, with median household income in 2017 of just $24,000, according to Census Bureau data. The correlation between low-income and under-resourced communities and low self-response rates is a vicious cycle, community leaders say. “When you look at our bottom seven or 14 communities that make up the Proviso Township, it can’t be more clear that the underserved are the very people not being See CENSUS on page 4