UPDATE: D158 Board of Education rejects motion to move Huntley High School’s 2022 graduation ceremony to Willow Creek Community Church

Editor’s Note: On December 22, My Huntley News published a story about the possibility of District 158’s Board of Education voting to move Huntley High School’s graduation ceremony to Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington. The story contained inaccurate information.

White Silo Media, which publishes MHN, takes an annual editorial break for the holiday season (which we’ve been doing for eleven years). During which time, stories are pre-scheduled to post to our news site. When the story mentioned above was written, it was current and contained accurate information. Since its writing, however, the story developed and changed before we had a chance to update it before it was posted to myhuntleynews.com. It has since been corrected.

The story that follows is the updated version that contains relevant and accurate information. My Huntley News regrets this error and apologizes to Huntley Community School District 158, its Board of Education, Huntley High School, Willow Creek Community Church, and our readers for the confusion.

HUNTLEY – Huntley Community School District 158 (D158) Superintendent Scott Rowe began discussions at the Dec. 2 Committee of the Whole meeting about the possibility of moving Huntley High School’s 2022 graduation ceremony away from its most current location at the Northern Illinois University (NIU) Convocation Center in DeKalb.

Huntley High School (HHS) had previously used the NOW Arena (formally known as the Sears Center) in Hoffman Estates to host graduation ceremonies as senior class sizes increased. However, due to the hefty $28,000 a day price tag of renting that venue, D158 decided to end that contract in the 2013-2014 school year to look for more affordable options.

According to Rowe, D158 had made past attempts at inquiring about utilizing Willow Creek Community Church as a possible graduation ceremony site, but the church had a strict policy in place that only allowed Barrington Community Unit School District 220’s Barrington High School to host a weekend graduation ceremony at their South Barrington campus.

In early October, Willow Creek notified D158 that they had changed their stance on weekend graduation ceremonies and were willing to enter into a year-by-year agreement with the district.

Despite some initial favorability expressed towards the potential of utilizing Willow Creek as a new graduation venue, opinions quickly changed at the Dec. 16 Board of Education (BOE) meeting as BOE members were made aware by some residents, students, and parents about Willow Creek Community Church’s ideologies regarding the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning) community.

Lisa Arvanites, the LGBTQ+ Committee Chair for the McHenry County Chapter of the National Organization for Women, used the public comments portion of the Dec. 16 meeting to read a portion of a document published by Willow Creek Community Church in 2020 that outlined how members and attendees of Willow Creek who experience same-sex attraction are asked to commit to celibacy.

Arvanites continued by telling BOE members that while church members have a right to their beliefs, “suggesting that LGBTQ students take part in a graduation at a facility where discrimination is accepted is akin to suggesting that black students in the south attend graduation ceremonies at a plantation.”

Following public comments, Rowe acknowledged the concerns surrounding Willow Creek Church and reiterated that the district’s top priority is the students.

“Our sole intention is to provide our families with the best possible venue that wish to celebrate the tremendous accomplishment from graduating from our high school. Our motivation to investigate other venue options comes from years of parent feedback,” said Rowe. “Over the years of hosting graduation at off-campus venues, families have consistently voiced their desire to find a location closer to home to accommodate an afternoon ceremony and to avoid the logistical challenges of traveling to DeKalb for a 7:30 p.m. ceremony all while finding a financially responsible option. We also heard after last year’s altered structure due to COVID-19, how important it was for our graduating class to be together during one ceremony if possible.”

BOE member Sean Cratty commented that while initially, he was interested in Willow Creek as a possible graduation venue, after having had discussions with 20 students on their thoughts and feelings on the venue change, he stated that he would be against an agreement with the megachurch.

Most of the other BOE members present at the Dec. 16 meeting echoed Cratty’s statement and agreed that voting in favor of a venue contract with Willow Creek Community Church would only exclude certain groups of students and their families which does not align with the district’s mission statement.

“We’ve been able to take two weeks or a week to process, seek out information on our own, talk to other people, read some of the information that’s being conveyed to us expressed by our community, and reformulate an opinion. So, for that, I’m glad that we’ve been able to have this kind of discussion or hear this kind of engagement from our community in such a constructive, in my opinion, and adult manner and so I thank the people for their emails and conversations,” BOE member Paul Troy said at the Dec. 16 meeting.

BOE President Tony Quagliano was the only member of the board to disagree with the rest of the BOE. Although BOE member Lesli Melendy was not present at the Dec. 16 meeting to make a formal vote, Quagliano made it clear that she was also against the Willow Creek Community Church contract.

Quagliano further expressed his disappointment as he believed that the Willow Creek Community Church South Barrington campus would provide a good experience for students and parents, given the limited number of venues the district has to choose from to hold their graduation ceremony.

“I’m concerned about where the graduation is. I was just at DeKalb for my oldest son’s graduation on Saturday. It was at two o’clock and if [Huntley High School’s graduation ceremony] was at two o’clock in DeKalb, I’d be okay. It’s not a problem. 7:30 at night, getting done at nine, getting home at 10, is that the best experience we can give them if we have choices,” said Quagliano.

He continued, “Again, I’m not an advocate for [or] against Willow Creek, but I’m going to point out something and I don’t think the community is all in tune [with] this. Willow Creek’s rented from our school district for 10 years. They provided us probably close to $800,000 of rentals over those 10 years. I don’t know if everybody had such a hard time with Willow Creek, where everybody was when we were renting our buildings to that group. They’ve been a community partner. This isn’t that church-state type of thing. This is a resource in the community that we also utilize for other purposes potentially for emergency purposes that we have an agreement with.”

When asked what his thoughts on the matter were, Huntley High School Principal Marcus Belin simply expressed that a student’s voice is what is most important to him.

Quagliano moved forward with making a motion to approve of the agreement with Willow Creek Community Church to host Huntley High School’s graduation ceremony, but because no other board member seconded the motion, the motion was defeated.