Parents look at walkability when choosing colleges

Of course parents, students and faculty over at Bradley University are concerned about the increase in crime on campus, and rightfully so. As a result, they have increased police patrols and added other security measures. However, now the Bradley Police are providing a shuttle service. How sad is that, really?

In a City the size of Peoria, on a campus the size of Bradley University (a school that is considered one of the best), crime is so bad, that students need to be coddled with a shuttle service?  Part of the college experience is the walkability of the campus. How embarrassing for Peoria, Bradley students are officially too good to walk through our City.

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Bradley University begins free nighttime shuttle service for students, faculty, staff

Peoria, IL (November 27, 2012) – Bradley University is launching a shuttle service for students, faculty and staff in the Bradley Police patrol area starting this evening.

Specially trained students employed by the Bradley Police Department’s Student Patrol will drive the Hilltop Safety Cruiser, a van that accommodates up to 6 passengers. The free shuttle will operate from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week in the patrol area that extends from Moss Avenue to Columbia Terrace and Western Avenue to Sheridan. The shuttle will be radio dispatched by calling 309 677-2800 and also will provide flag-down rides. Students, faculty and staff must display a valid Bradley ID.

The Hilltop Safety Cruiser will circulate through the patrol area but will not have defined stops. The new service supplements the walking escort patrol that has been available to students for several years.

The Hilltop Safety Cruiser will operate when the University is in session during the regular academic year. Source

Children used to respect their elders...

18 year old Sharome Kruz of Peoria and two 15 year olds are in custody, all charged with first degree murder and armed robbery.

The incident resulted in the shooting death of 54 year old Michael Robinson. He was sot in the head. Also shot but still recovering is 52 year old Perry Mollohan. He received a gunshot wound to his face, but the injury is not life threatening.

The shootings happened on the back porch of Mollhan's house at 2214 West Starr just before 1000 Wednesday night. Robinson had been out on parole for 5 years for the murder of a Bradley University professor 30 years ago. Source

County Board member working on her bucket list

"When I turned 50 I said I was going to try to do some things that I have always wanted to do. One thing on my list was to sing the National Anthem at a sporting event. Bradley's mens games will only let people in the music dept at BU or faculity/staff sing at their games but they told me I could sing at a women's game so...I said ok so.......

I am going to sing the National Anthem at the following Bradley Girls Basketball Game! I hope dont' forget the words!"

Friday, Feb. 25 @ 5:30 PM vs. Northern Iowa (this is a televised game live on Fox Sports Midwest, Fox Sports Kansas City, Fox College Sports and Comcast SportsNet Plus).

The Urban League's Urban Youth Empowerment Program

The local Urban League is one of six affiliates in the country that has a grant to continue a pilot program designed to prepare young people in the 18 - 24 age group for the workforce.

The local Urban League’s success with its Urban Youth Empowerment Program is the reason the agency is able to continue the pilot project with a $200,000 grant funded through a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Urban League.

Of the 27 affiliates originally funded through the project, the local Urban League had the third-highest number of participants who found and retained jobs after going through the program.

About the Urban League
After a wave of black migrants fleeing oppression in the South for opportunity in the North in the early 1900s, a wealthy white widow, Ruth Standish Baldwin, and George Edmund Haynes, a social worker and the first black to receive a doctoral degree from Columbia University, took the lead in founding the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in 1910.

Based in New York, the committee soon merged with two other organizations. Haynes became the first director. The organization shortened its name to the National Urban League in 1920.

As the organization grew, independent affiliates spread throughout the country. The Tri-County affiliate, based in Peoria, was founded in 1965 by an interracial group of local citizens.

In 1964, Erma Davis, Valeska Hinton and Helen Leatherwood urged a group of local businessmen and community leaders to start an Urban League affiliate in Peoria. The group passed the hat, raising $27,000 in one night. Frank Campbell was hired as the first director a year later, and Talman Van Arsdale, then president of Bradley University, was the first president of the board of directors.

The national office sets the Urban League’s broad mission on issues of education, employment, housing, health and civil rights while some 100 affiliates are free to localize the mission to suit community needs. Unemployment remains a chief area of concern at the national and local level.

Source

Hot Job: Urban School Symposium Producer

Interesting that ALL of the proceeds from the day long conference on urban education, which is being held by the City, Chamber of Commerce and Bradley University, are going to the Institute for Principled Leadership.

If this is about inner city schools - why aren't the proceeds going to help fund inner city schools? Isn't the Charter School still trying to raise money?

It appears that selling tickets to talk about fixing inner city schools is a money maker all across the country. It would be nice if some of the money these symposium producers are making actually benefited the urban schools they talk about caring so much about.

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PEORIA — The list of education officials and experts converging in Peoria later this month to discuss changes to public education is growing by the day, organizers say.

Kenneth Wong, considered the leading expert on urban education and director of the Urban Education Policy Program at Brown University, will join U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and renowned education reformer Paul Vallas to speak at an education symposium at the Peoria Civic Center titled "Transforming Public Education."

The daylong conference, sponsored by the city of Peoria, the Institute for Principled Leadership, the Dirksen Center and the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce, is set for April 21 at the Civic Center. Cost ranges from $50 to $175 and the proceeds go to the Institute for Principled Leadership at Bradley University, which is organizing the event.

Some 40 Illinois mayors have been invited and school superintendents from across the state have been signing up. There is also hope that community members will come.

Other speakers include Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools; Suzanne Armato, executive director of the Federation of Community Schools; Christopher Koch, Illinois Superintendent of Public Schools; and Joan Sattler, dean of the college of education and health sciences at Bradley.

Source

Angela Davis lecture tonight - Neumiller Hall

Author and activist Angela Davis will present a guest lecture at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 9, in Neumiller Lecture Hall, located in Bradley Hall on the Bradley University campus. The event, which is presented by Bradley’s Women’s Studies Program and the Intellectual and Cultural Activities Committee, is open to the public and admission is free.

Davis, who once appeared on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List,” is now a professor of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. In her lecture, “Gender, Race, and Crime,” she will discuss the criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination – with a particular focus on women.

Davis has lectured throughout the world and she is the author of eight books. She also works with several advocacy groups, including Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison and engages in support for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems.

Source

Meaningful school leadership: Dr. Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat a role model for our children

Imagine how you would feel if you were a Manual High School student, parent and/or alumni and you stumbled across a local blog filled with days on end of negative comments about your high school; the intelligence (or lack thereof) of the students; and the capabilities of the administrators.

Frankly, after all that I have read, I don't know what to think about Manual High School and the program they are running under the microscope of the District 150 Watch Group. However, I am willing to trust in the capabilities of the Principal, Dr. Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat. I consider Dr. Kherat an excellent role model for all of our children and most certainly for the young black women in this community who desperately need role models.

In July of 2009, Dr. Sharon Kherat was in the Bradley University Alumni Association Magazine's Spotlight (read excerpt below). Although Dr. Kherat is much more than just her curriculum vitae, her accomplishments are impressive...

Desmoulin-Kherat received her BA degree from Bradley in 1986 with majors in history and secondary education. In 1989, she graduated with a master’s degree in education administration. She went on to earn a doctorate degree in education administration in 2006 from Illinois State University. She was one of a group of local educators who worked on their doctorate degrees together and Illinois State accommodated them by teaching many of their classes at Richwoods High School in Peoria. She completed her dissertation on “Meaningful School Leadership from the Perspective of African-American Parents.”

Upon graduating from Bradley, Dr. Kherat began her career as a middle school teacher and has since held a variety of positions in the Peoria area including Assistant Principal at Roosevelt Magnet school, Principal of Whittier Primary School and Adjunct Instructor at Bradley University. In 2008 she was appointed Principal of Manual Middle and High School. She was hired to facilitate a unique restructuring to “improve student academic achievement and enable the school to make adequate yearly progress as defined by the State’s accountability system.”

Although her professional life is marked with many accomplishments, she considers her first year at Manual as her biggest success. “Thus far, we have experienced improvement in the following areas: students’ enrollment, increased attendance, an increased course passing rate, lower suspension and expulsion rates, and an increased number of student graduates.”

As it celebrates its 100th anniversary, the new Manual has created four academies to drive student success, increase academic performance, and foster a sense of belonging among its students. Manual Middle and High School believes in high expectations for each student and offers a curriculum grounded in that principle. “We have adopted the three new “Rs” of education: Rigor, Relevance and Relationships.”

Dr. Kherat has found it very exciting and challenging to take a theoretical model and put it into practice. “We are flying the plane while building it. Everything is new - from the staff, new practices, to the curriculum to the academies. Yet the process has been embraced by the students and staff and progress is being made. As we raise the bar for Manual, we must continue to raise the level of support for our students and their families.”

Desmoulin-Kherat has won numerous awards and honors including Principal of the Year (2008); Blue Ribbon Award (Whittier Primary 2005); National Center for Urban School Transformation Award (2006); Professional Advocacy Award (Children’s Hospital of Illinois 2005); and Peoria’s 40 Leaders Under 40 (2001). She is still involved with Bradley, currently serving as a member of the College of Education and Health Sciences Educational Advisory Committee.
Source

Isn't blogging a community service?

Emerge recently questioned Board of Education member, Jim Stowell on why he continues to blog and exactly how he remains motivated in such a hostile atmosphere. After checking to make sure Emerge wasn't some randomized avatar Mr. Stowell responded (in part) as follows:

... A lot of wrong information is shared on the blogs and it helps to keep the perceptions of the district mired in negativity. Responding to all questions is difficult, so I now take the tract someone suggested - sign your name and I'll take it in - don't and it rolls on... We have great kids in our district who deserve more opportunities than what they perceive. That is why I challenge the community to step up to help, not just be
content to sit down and blog...

I like that Mr. Stowell is conscious of the perception the community has of the District. But shouldn't the District PR person and/or her assistant be handling that?

Besides, we need Mr. Stowell's finance expertise (BS in Finance and Economics in 1983 and his MBA in 1985 from Bradley University) focused on District 150's finances, the dollars, the money, the budget. When can we see who is on that Budget and Planning Committee?