Pull up a chair, kids. Let’s have a history lesson.
Champaign Central High School used to be called … Champaign High School.
It wasn’t until 1967-68 (corrected) that Champaign High School became Champaign Central, when Centennial was officially named a distinct, second high school for the district. At the time, Champaign had a population of less than 55,000 but had experienced incredible growth in the two previous decades.
I recall this history after attending the Champaign Park District’s Feb. 25 forum to discuss the Champaign Unit 4 Schools request for land to build a new high school at Dodds Park.
This is not about what is means to be “central”; that word does not reflect how the city has changed since 1968.
But it is about another “c” word, one I didn’t heard for more than one hour and fifteen minutes into Wednesday night’s event: children.
It was almost halfway through the forum that any one of the multiple speakers and most of the community players – Park District commissioners; public commenters; the Champaign Urbana Mass Transit District; Parkland College, the city of Champaign — even the school district itself — mentioned that very key word, one that humanizes this critical issue.
Let’s remember who and what this is about. This is not about egos and entitlement. This is not about vitriol and vengeance.
This is about our children and their future.
This is very real to parents who have children looking ahead at high school in the next six to seven years, when the district has projected that capacity for high school students will be at 120 percent.
It’s also real to current students like Central’s Cedric Jones, who passionately spoke Wednesday night in favor of the Dodds Park location. Jones’ reflection about the 40 students in his history class was a powerful first-hand testimonial.
It should be real to citizens who care about Champaign and its future prosperity at a very critical juncture. Today, the city is in another population growth cycle; has been for more than 15 years.
The Park District has faced similar issues, but not as publicly: how to keep up with the city’s rapid growth, which has resulted in a deficit in public lands and aging facilities. The forum commenter comparing the ratio of green space per capita to a place like Decatur — which is shrinking, not growing — doesn’t acknowledge such a simple yet important fact.
We can’t continue to dwell in the past, at a Champaign that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Looking forward means that no plan is perfect, except the one that puts our children’s education first.
Whether the new Champaign high school is built at Dodds Park, with all of the educational advantages of being co-located next to a world-class community college — or not. At the Interstate Drive location– or not.
Our community’s true challenge is not where to build a new Champaign high school. It is whether or not it can rally together to provide the best educational opportunities to what one speaker called our “most important asset”: our children, our future.
Laura Weisskopf Bleill is the mom-in-chief of chambanamoms.com. You can reach her at laura@chambanamoms.com or feel free to comment below.
(If you want to look back at what happened at Wednesday night’s meeting at Leonhard Recreation Center, you can read our live tweet stream below.)