Kankakee School District 111 threw a welcome-back celebration for staff this week while nearly half its students chronically skip class and just 16% meet grade-level math standards — the real party is for the adults who keep collecting paychecks regardless of results.
Across the country, the public school apparatus marks another year of institutional survival while the product delivered to families continues to deteriorate. In Kankakee, Illinois, that means cheering through staff layoffs, a school building closed mid-year, a software rollout the superintendent herself called a "failure," and proficiency numbers that would alarm any parent paying attention. In Somerville, Massachusetts, it means a state House race where no Republican even filed to run — one party, one ideology, zero accountability at the ballot box.
Superintendent Teresa Lance acknowledged the brutal year at Thursday's convocation, according to Shaw Local. Staff lost jobs through a reduction in force. Edison Primary School closed in December over structural issues, displacing students mid-year. A tornado tore through Kankakee in March, causing millions in damage to district buildings and vehicles. Lance said she had never experienced a harder year in 32 years in education.
"It was hard, but look around. We made it," Lance said. "That means we can do hard things, and we can do them together."
They made it. The kids, by the numbers, didn't. Illinois Assessment of Readiness scores show 26% of third-through-eighth-graders meet grade-level standards in English, 16% in math, and 21% in science. Chronic absenteeism hit nearly 42% — meaning those students missed 10% or more of the school year, excused or not. Lance called the trend "moving in the right direction" but conceded "it's not good enough."
The district did hit one marker: Kankakee High School's four-year graduation rate climbed from 71% in 2023 to 85% in 2025, with Principal Albert Brass claiming 92% for the class of 2026. How a district graduates 92% of students when only 16% meet math standards is a question nobody at the convocation appears to have asked.
Follow the money: the school board approved tentative budget numbers projecting $102.7 million in revenue against $92 million in expenditures for fiscal 2027. The district holds about $24.9 million in reserves — roughly 90 days of operating funds, half the state-recommended 180-day buffer. Lance warned the district "cannot spend as we have been spending."
Meanwhile, in Somerville's 27th Middlesex District, the race to replace state Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven features two Democrats and zero Republicans. City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, a Harvard Medical School research associate, lists "great public schools" among his priorities. His opponent, Olivia Gilligan Corsetti, a substitute teacher and former Gov. Healey constituent services staffer, campaigns on reducing toxic chemicals in schools and PFAS contamination. Neither will face a general-election challenge from the opposing party. The voters get no choice.
Lance told her staff, "Yes, we can celebrate, but we can't stay there." The question is whether families in Kankakee — and districts like it across the country — will stay there either, or keep pulling their kids out of a system that throws a party for itself while three-quarters of its students can't read at grade level.
