New Champaign school board seated amid tensions over agenda and superintendent’s future

After a month of delays due to lack of quorum, the Champaign School District seated its new board during a special meeting Friday night. The meeting, expected to be a procedural formality, quickly turned contentious as disputes over next week’s agenda and the superintendent’s future sparked heated exchanges between board members and the public.

By Elizabeth Hess May 11, 2025 11:15 am

ContributedElizabeth HessBruno and the board majority opted to scrap the preexisting agenda for next week’s meeting, including several long-delayed administrative appointments.

CHAMPAIGN, IL (Chambana Today) – After a month of delays due to lack of quorum, the Champaign School District seated its new board during a special meeting Friday night. The meeting, expected to be a procedural formality, quickly turned contentious as disputes over next week’s agenda and the superintendent’s future sparked heated exchanges between board members and the public.

Five new members were sworn in: Christy Arnold, Tony Bruno, and Grace Kang will serve four-year terms, while Fatima Ahmed and Justin Michael Hendrix begin two-year terms. Bruno was elected Board President with five votes, and Ahmed was chosen as Vice President with six votes, both for one-year terms.

Bruno and the board majority opted to scrap the preexisting agenda for next week’s meeting, including several long-delayed administrative appointments. The sudden move sparked backlash from both the audience and board members Hendrix and Kang.

At the heart of the dispute is an item scheduled for the next meeting on May 12: issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for an executive search firm to potentially replace Superintendent Sheila Boozer. On Facebook, Boozer pushed back against the process, stating, “This agenda has been created since April 14 … for someone to come in and bring the agenda to be done and then ask my staff to post it, that is not how things work.”