Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday granted Decatur a respite from protests after a federal judge here put off until late December a showdown over the city’s student expulsion controversy.
“There are not plans for marches,” Jackson said in a phone interview. “We want the students to do well in alternative school. We want them to have good attendance, good decorum and good grades.”
To that end, the Chicago civil rights leader said he wanted “to buy each of these students a laptop computer for Christmas” to help them in the alternative programs they began Monday.
After Gov. George Ryan intervened in the controversy, the Decatur school board on Nov. 8 lowered the students’ expulsions from two years to one year for engaging in a Sept. 17 fistfight that sent spectators scrambling through the bleachers at an Eisenhower High School football game. But Jackson is pushing to get the students back into their regular classrooms as early as January.
He also reasserted that the Decatur controversy has broader implications on the question of whether school administrators are overzealously fighting school violence with “capricious” and “arbitrary” zero-tolerance policies.
“Out of this Decatur crucible there are several issues here with broad statewide and national applications,” he said.
Zero tolerance “is good political language. It sounds good,” Jackson added. “Of course we do not condone violence. The question becomes, `How do you judge degrees of violence?’ “
That’s one of the key issues in the federal case filed by six of the Decatur students against the Decatur Board of Education. A seventh student has since enrolled in school in Tennessee.
U.S. District Judge Michael McCuskey agreed Monday to delay the courtroom fight to allow lawyers for the students time to refine their arguments against zero-tolerance policies.
McCuskey said he wants to take up the issue before the second semester begins in January and cleared his calendar for three days beginning Dec. 27.
“By January, hopefully, they’ll be back in regular school,” said Lewis Myers Jr., lead attorney for the six students.
Decatur school officials have insisted their zero-tolerance policy is merely a “position.” They say the expulsions were based on the student disciplinary code, which punishes fighting with anything from a three-day suspension to expulsion.
“We’ve got to get our schools back to normal,” Decatur Supt. Kenneth Arndt said outside the Urbana courtroom. “And with this unbelievable attention, our kids are afraid to go to school because of this tremendous media attention. . . . We’re asking everybody to please leave us alone so we can do the job we need to do.”
Previously, school officials and their attorneys have blamed either Jackson’s activities or alleged threats from white supremacists for disturbing classes.
Jackson was not in Urbana on Monday, but dozens of individuals, many from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, quietly protested outside the courthouse in support of the Decatur students.
Meanwhile, Myers said his side had filed a motion to move from state court to federal court a complaint by Decatur officials that seeks to bar Jackson and his supporters from within 50 feet of school property.
Also Monday, five anti-racism protesters remained in Macon County Jail after being charged with rushing police in an attempt to reach Matt Hale, the white power activist who brought his World Church of the Creator supporters to Decatur on Sunday for a rally.
Don Coventry, chief of the Decatur Park District police, said the masked counter-demonstrators charged police and doused two officers with pepper spray. One demonstrator also spray-painted the words “Smash the WCOTC” on a park pavilion.
