Educator Blondean Davis reflects on 44-year career overcoming hurdles
Nationally recognized educator Blondean Davis has a way of making you feel like there is no problem too great to be solved.
Even when solutions to specific problems have yet to reveal themselves, Davis maintains faith that any obstacle can be overcome.
“If I’m not hopeful in a leadership capacity that we’re going to work ourselves out of some of these problems then why would you think that children would be?” she said. “I do believe it will be their generation that will solve most of the problems and that will be courageous enough to take the actions that need to be taken.”
I listened as Davis shared her wisdom for nearly an hour Wednesday in a conference room near her office at Southland College Preparatory Charter High School in Richton Park. She is CEO of the charter school and superintendent of Matteson School District 162.
We met on the occasion of her induction to the Illinois Black Hall of Fame at Governors State University in University Park. Davis and seven others will be honored June 18 as the Hall’s second class of inductees.
Davis led the effort to establish Southland College Prep, which opened in 2010.
The school’s rigorous curriculum has produced students who have earned more than $250 million in merit-based scholarships to Ivy League universities and other top colleges, the school said.
“If we’re not talking about the ability to send them to any college, if they can’t feel the dream then what is it all about?” Davis said. “It’s not just about the children, it’s about their parents, it’s about the community, it’s about the future.”
Davis reflected on her 44-year career. She recalls playing with dolls on a couch at age 3 in her home in Chicago’s Englewood
neighborhood when her mother asked what she was doing.
“I’m a teacher, mother,” Davis replied.
“She said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be a teacher, I want you to be a good one.’ That’s the first time I remember that I knew what I wanted to be.”
Her family and community valued faith, education and service.
“I was raised in the church,” Davis said. “There was an expectation of leadership, an expectation that you would give back in some way.”
She attended Chicago Public Schools, then earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in education from Loyola University Chicago.
She worked for Chicago Public Schools for 30 years, beginning as a history teacher and finishing as chief of schools and regions, responsible for daily management of 600 schools.
“I thought my destiny was to be superintendent of Chicago Public Schools,” she said.
Rather, she retired from CPS and spent a couple years teaching future teachers at Saint Xavier University. She became superintendent of District 162 in 2002 and soon tried to persuade her School Board to form a unit district and open its own high school.
“No one knew what that meant,” she said.
Davis soon learned it would be much quicker to open a charter school, but opponents filed a legal challenge.
“For the first time since I left Chicago I put myself out there politically for a fight, and we fought for three and half years,” Davis said. “It wasn’t so much a local fight, it was about the authority of the state board to open a school.”
Davis parlayed her diverse experiences working in Chicago and the suburbs to create the first suburban public charter school in Illinois.
“It enabled me to take all those ideas and create something new, different and unique,” she said.
Southland College Prep has consistently touted its academic rigor, college admission success and 100% graduation rates.
Now fine arts and athletics are adding depth to the academic experience. Southland recently opened a 36,000-square-foot field house that expanded the campus of the former office building at 4601 Sauk Trail.
Southland’s track record of scholastic achievement is exceptional.
Many other public high schools in the south suburbs face challenges in terms of adequate and equitable funding and how that relates to student success. Davis said she had too much respect for other public school districts to criticize them.
I asked Davis about a lack of opportunities for many students due to inequitable resources because of the state’s overreliance on local property taxes to fund education.
“They’re solvable, but it takes a lot of effort,” she said of the funding equity challenges.
Southland aggressively pursues grants and other funding, she said. Money should never prevent a student from pursuing an opportunity.
“All this would not be possible unless we were doing a good job of telling them they really have unlimited potential, and asking the question, what are you going to do with it?” she said.
I asked Davis about grievance and resentment over paying taxes to fund schools and other services. Davis said the best way to address those concerns was to encourage people to talk to one another and work harder to understand each other.
“There is a movement to determine what is taught in schools. There is also dissatisfaction,” she said. “We’re struggling as a country with public education. We put a lot of money into it.”
Community members might better understand how their tax dollars produce value by recognizing Southland’s accomplishments, she said.
“They don’t see this,” Davis said, referring to scholastic successes. “I’m not sure that we as educators do a good job inviting people in and making sure they understand how significant this is.”
In addition to Davis, other 2022 Illinois Black Hall of Fame inductees are Emil Jones, retired president of the Illinois State Senate; Dorothy M. Lovell, editor and publisher of the Chicago Crusader; and Linda Murray, M.D., past president of the American Public Health Association.
Also, John W. Rogers, Jr., chairman of Ariel Investments; Derrick Taylor Jr., president of the Black McDonald’s Operators Association; Willie Wilson, philanthropist and Chicago mayoral candidate; and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial pastor emeritus of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.