McLean County Times

Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) appreciated Sen. Dave Koehler's (D-Peoria) bill to amend the school code before casting her vote.

Koehler's legislation would establish a Rural Education Advisory Council to engage educators, which Rezin supported. The bill would focus on the needs of rural districts and provide policy recommendations to the state.

"I appreciate Sen. Koehler for bringing this," Rezin said during a Senate Education Committee meeting. "It's long overdue."

Rezin also agreed with Sen. Omar Aquino (D-Chicago) that there is a need to look at language access. She continued pointing out the significance of dealing with this issue and alluded to the recent Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) approved new teaching standards.

"We started to deal with that in a past meeting," she said. "We do know we need more money to help with the language barrier, so I'm glad you brought that up. I am going back to why this is important. We do feel rural schools are being left out of a lot of the conversations regarding education. [For] example, in JCAR about a month ago, an administrative rule was brought before us involving culturally responsive teaching. And I know many of you, regardless of what side of that issue you're on, you reside support or opposition regarding the rules that were written."

The Republican senator wanted to make sure that educators are well represented and appreciated Koehler's position that an amendment would address that concern.

"What we found while asking questions about the task force dealing with a very large shift in teacher learning and culturally responsive in school districts that the task force that put this together represents the whole state but the reps were only from Chicago," she said. "One person on the task force from Rockford. I'm sure there were well-intentioned, but zero were from downstate, and that's why it's important to have a commission from downstate to look and research to work together with ISBE.