Committee for Equity and Excellence in Education

We are a multi-racial group of Oak Park and River Forest residents advocating for racial equity at Oak Park River Forest High School.

recent posts

  • Statement on the killing of Christian Wallace

    The members of CEEE also participate in the Alliance for Black Youth and we have crafted this joint statement on the killing of Christian Wallace.

    The Alliance for Black Youth exists to advance equitable outcomes for Black youth by centering their voice, experience, and success. By many measures, our society continues to marginalize Black men, both nationally and locally. In healthcare, the criminal legal system, housing, jobs, and education, the evidence demonstrates that we ignore the needs of Black men, and this starts when those Black men are boys. 

    The Alliance works to advance the interests of those Black boys and young men, and unfortunately the threat to them from armed agents of our government is very real. That risk only increases as those Black boys and young men grow into adults. Our Black youth are watching how this community responds. They are learning whether their voices matter, whether their lives are valued, and whether the adults entrusted with leadership will act with courage or simply wait for the next tragedy.

    We all saw evidence of this recently here in Oak Park as a police officer shot and killed Christian Wallace during a traffic stop. And we have all seen this evidence throughout our country, over the last 10 years and throughout our national history. Members of this community have already demanded an investigation into the incident, the elimination of non-safety traffic stops, and other measures which we support. 

    Our organization’s particular lens is on how this incident in particular and community circumstances in general affect our Black youth. They deserve better from us in all ways. Our organization has been pushing recently for our high school to provide better and more extensive supports for students. We need more opportunities for youth employment and places to hang out. And we need to ensure that we do everything to make our youth physically safe, especially around the adults who are charged with keeping them so. True public safety is not measured only by emergency response. It is measured by whether young people have trusted adults, meaningful opportunities, places where they belong, and confidence that the institutions serving them will protect rather than marginalize them.

    Black people are stopped disproportionately by police in this community and Black young men even moreso. We need to make major shifts in this community – both in our narrative about Black young men and also our supports for them. 

    We ask that you take the community demands seriously. We also ask that Black youth and organizations that work alongside them have a meaningful seat at the table as solutions are developed. Decisions about the future of our community should not be made without those most impacted.

    This moment will define more than a response to one incident. It will define what kind of community Oak Park chooses to be. We have an opportunity to demonstrate that Black youth are not only heard, but valued, protected, and empowered to thrive. The Alliance for Black Youth stands ready to partner with the Village to help make that vision a reality.

  • Support Black students this Juneteenth

    On this Juneteenth 2026, the Alliance for Black Youth and the Committee for Equity and Excellence in Education (CEEE) state our commitment to supporting all students, and particularly Black students, at OPRFHS.

    We express our grave disappointment with the OPRFHS administration for prioritizing capital investments without designating funds to provide recommended supports for students who need them.

    We appreciate the Board members who have spoken up on behalf of students’ academic needs, including the need to provide high impact tutoring and to provide essential services with urgency.

    In the context of the history of this country, this suburb, and of OPRFHS, we call on the OPRFHS administration to prioritize student learning, and to recommit to their stated goal of equity by initiating appropriate academic supports for students for school year 2026-2027.

    Over the last four years independent freshman all honors program evaluations, parent requests, school instructional and support services administrators, and the Historical Harms to the Black Community and Suggested Repairs inquiry have all recommended significant new equity centered student resources. Finally, in April the Board Community Finance Committee recommended immediate action around neglected instructional resources that are essential to fulfilling the racial equity goals of D 200.

    We urge the D 200 Board to direct Superintendent Johnson and the administration to provide these critical services.

  • Using education funds to pay for construction

    Over the past five years, the OPRF School Board has taken millions of dollars that should have been used to pay for students’ education and used it to pay for capital expenses. Now, they plan to take $14 million more. They have scheduled a vote at the May 28th school board meeting to transfer these funds from the education and operations funds to the capital projects fund. This is misdirection of monies that should be used to pay for teachers, for aides, for targeted tutoring, for remediation, for acceleration – for educating our young people. The physical facilities of a school building are certainly important, but they should never come at the expense of teaching and supports. The availability of these funds for construction confirms what we have been saying for years – and what the district has been claiming is true – there is plenty of money to pay for whatever educational supports our students need. The board should move now to implement those supports.

  • Email the OPRF School Board about petition

    Please email the OPRF School Board and let them know that you are not satisfied with their response to our petition. 

    In September 2025, we delivered a petition asking the School Board to (1) provide more effective assistance to students in the Freshman All-Honors program and (2) create an Equity Advisory Group composed of students, families, school staff, and Board members which would collaborate to improve students’ experiences and outcomes. 

    The Board responded to this petition in January, stating that monitoring the school’s curriculum is the Board’s responsibility, and that they would have administrators make several reports to the Board over the next few months to increase their monitoring of the school’s work.

    This response is insufficient to the needs of students and families and does not meet the request that we have made of the Board. We ask that you email the school board directly and let them know that you are not satisfied with their response. By clicking on the link, you will open a pre-populated email message that you can modify and personalize.

    Thank you so much for your involvement in this campaign and supporting the Oak Park-River Forest community.

  • Celebrating the Life of Wyanetta Johnson

    Friends: with a heavy heart we  share with you the news that Wyanetta Johnson — who epitomized the spirit, love and determination of the movement for racial justice and equity in our schools — passed away on New Years Day 2026.

    Her friends provide the following narrative of Wyanetta’s over forty years of effort to bring us closer to being a beloved community for all.

    Wyanetta Johnson was a beloved and lifelong advocate for racial justice and equity for children, parents, professionals, and teachers throughout the Oak Park and River Forest communities. “Mrs. Johnson,” as her allies referred to her, or “grandma” as generations of students fondly called her, passed away on New Years Day, 2026. While she had been limited in her activism in the past few years, she continued to inspire and counsel today’s racial equity workers.

    Mrs. Johnson was born April 18, 1939. Her early years were spent in and around the Sikeston and Charleston area of Missouri, where both Black and white people worked as sharecroppers. Her family was engaged with racial justice efforts in the generation before the Civil Rights Movement.

    Mrs. Johnson was a leader in African American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education (APPLE) from the late ‘80s when she joined with other Black community members, working to protect and guide Black and other children in Oak Park schools. She helped children navigate and succeed in school settings that were trying to transition to integrated, inclusive and culturally respected places for Black children. In the current era, Mrs. Johnson was a leading voice in calling for D200 to adopt a racial equity policy and expand high status learning to all students by launching the Freshman All Honors Curriculum, now in its fourth year.

    Mrs. Johnson served as President and Vice President of APPLE, working closely with other Black leaders, white allies, and progressive Board members to move the high school into the era where racial equity became the District’s avowed priority in the first decade of the millennium.

    In the ‘80s, APPLE had a presence in all the schools in Oak Park. Mrs. Johnson and other parents mentored Black students during the school day and afterschool, leading study skills and homework assistance programs. They organized career days, “Saturday school,” seminars for parents, and overnight retreats for children. Through APPLE programming and generous donation of time and resources, Black mothers, fathers, and community members were engaged in guiding Oak Park’s Black children.  Mrs. Johnson was known for her energy and generosity, often reaching into her own pocket – whether to feed children or to assist in enrolling students at Triton or other programs.  

    In what one might consider a successful precursor to Social Emotional Learning, APPLE had their own room at OPRFHS, where all students were welcomed, counseled, tutored, and found rest. Remarkably, Mrs. Johnson also counseled first year teachers on classroom management and discipline. For several years in the 1990s, Mrs. Johnson and other Black parents organized the wildly popular Fashion and Talent Show, a standing-room-only event that they opened to all students.

    In 1994, OPRFHS administrators and some teachers became territorial about roles and space; APPLE moved out of the school. Subsequently, Mrs. Johnson united APPLE in an election coalition, creating a multi-racial alliance of the Oak Park NAACP, the Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Alliance, students, and racial equity advocates from D97 who successfully reversed new forms of in-school segregation in the 1980s. Mrs. Johnson regularly was involved in organizing around elections at the local, state, and national level.

    In the first decade of the millennium, with attorneys and community education experts, Mrs. Johnson helped organize a legal challenge to the gross inequities Black children experienced in Oak Park’s special education and discipline policies. Those efforts set the stage for a subsequent major overhaul of special education at OPRFHS and the beginning of evidence-supported ways to bring equity to the school’s discipline practices.

    Wyanetta Johnson, through her more than forty years of advocating for children and teachers, epitomized the adage “speak truth to power”—she never failed to do so. She advocated with an open, loving heart, showing kindness and respect to all she encountered in her calling to make Oak Park schools truly schools for all children who walked through their doors. That is the exact standard our schools must seek to realize today. All who knew Wyanetta Johnson will continue to press forward with her vision and her boundless dedication to that quest.

  • Join us at this week’s board meeting

    We have been campaigning for improved supports for freshman students in Oak Park River Forest High School’s Freshman All-Honors program. Please read the post below, Sustaining Racial Equity in OPRF Curriculum, to find out more.

    And if you haven’t already, please sign the petition.

    Now, we’re asking you to join us at this Thursday’s school board meeting. It is at OPRF High School, 201 N. Scoville Ave. at 7:30pm on Thursday, September 25th.

    Please join us to show your support for OPRF freshmen!

  • Sustaining Racial Equity in OPRF Curriculum

    Here is our letter to the Oak Park River Forest School Board. Please sign this petition to support this campaign and include your name in a letter which will be delivered to the Board and published in the local newspaper Wednesday Journal. 

    Seven years ago, after analyzing student data and concluding that OPRF’s institutional practice of tracking perpetuated educational inequity, D200 declared its commitment to a “transformative restructuring” of the freshman curriculum (OPRF Restructured Freshman Curriculum Analysis Report, September 2024). Then, after extensive research, teachers created the Freshman All- Honors Curriculum which now benefits the majority of students in the school. In the past three elections, the OPRF community demonstrated that it believes in the freshman program that expands opportunity for all students to experience honors level curriculum.

    This semester the Freshman All-Honors Curriculum begins its fourth year. To ensure its sustainability and continued success, the D200 Board must provide additional–and more effective–supports for the program and establish an independent Curriculum Equity Advisory Group to monitor and make timely recommendations for curriculum equity.

    Call for More Supports

    Since the launch of Freshman All-Honors, the need for more supports has been repeatedly documented. After the program’s first year, an evaluation recommended more assistance for students scoring at lower levels on standardized tests (OPRF Restructured Freshman Curriculum Analysis, Sept. 2023). In the year two evaluation, parents requested more student assistance as well (Isobar Restructured Curriculum Analysis, Sept. 2024). Also, last year Black Oak Park researchers asserted that a lack of support for Black students’ success in honors and AP courses is a long-standing systemic harm that needs immediate correction (Historical Harms to the Black Community of Oak Park and Suggested Repairs, 2024). The District itself acknowledged that, post-pandemic, more academic and social supports were needed to achieve racial equity (OPRF MTSS Report, June 2023). Finally, an initial evaluation of the tutoring program points to the need for considerable revision if it is to address the learning needs of all students (OPRF Tutoring and Testing Center Update, June 2023). We, the undersigned, remind the D200 Board of their commitments to racial and educational equity and call on the Board to:

    1. Require the District to provide more effective assistance to students in the Freshman All- Honors program, co-designed with impacted students and families.
    2. Create an authentically independent Curriculum Equity Advisory Group that sets and monitors time-sensitive goals to ensure ongoing improvements to the Freshman All-Honors curriculum.

    In doing so, the Board will act on its stated commitment to increased academic support with the same vigor it has exhibited for the physical reconstruction of the school.

  • Infrastructure at the high school — Project 3 concerns

    OPRF High School has engaged in a series of infrastructure projects known as IMAGINE OPRF. Project 1 focused on classrooms, the welcome center, student commons, and the tutoring center. Project 2 is ongoing and focuses on a new pool, locker rooms, and other PE facilities. Now, they are moving forward with Project 3 focused on fine arts. On Wednesday, August 6, 2025, and Monday, August 25, 2025, they will have a series of 2 meetings to present this project to the public and engage in conversations about the impact of this project on racial equity at the high school.

    We appreciate that the fine arts are necessary for a strong high school and strong community, and we believe that no facilities project should prevent a school from spending on student supports and programs.

    The high school instituted a Freshman All-Honors program in fall 2022, which means almost all freshmen take Honors Science, History, and Language Arts. But evidence shows that some students need more supports to be successful in the program, and that the district needs to do more to support Black and Latino boys in the program.

    The district says they can complete Project 3 and pay for racial equity needs. Will they commit to providing the specific supports required for students in the Freshman All-Honors program?

    Click here to find out more about our concerns.

  • Join Our Campaigns

    Please get involved in our work to push OPRF High School to provide equitable supports for all of their students. To stay informed, sign up for our mailing list and follow us on Instagram and BlueSky.