RANTOUL — One three-letter acronym (AT&T) will give way to another (RCS) on the front of a building on the former Chanute Air Force Base airport grounds.
Construction is underway to turn the building’s 40,000-square-foot first floor into the school district’s unit office and classroom space for Rantoul City Schools.
The upstairs portion of the building is home to two film-production companies
In turn, the area at J.W. Eater Junior High School that used to house the unit office will now be home to a Promise Healthcare school-based health center that will serve Rantoul and other area towns.
“We are renting the entire first floor,” RCS Superintendent Scott Woods said. “One half will be the district office and the other half” an alternative program the district is starting.
About 300 people used to work at the AT&T call center building until the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus scare resulted in employees working from home, where they handled customer calls.
After the pandemic, the company gave employees the option of working from home or returning to the office. Only a handful opted to work at the office building, and the company opted to end its lease last month.
Woods said the district office is being moved in phases to the new location while construction progresses. The transition to the new building will be completed by the end of September.
The move of the district’s human resources and business offices will wait until after the school year starts.
Promise Healthcare began moving into the former RCS district office site Monday. Promise also began signing up families last week during the district’s centralized registration and filled 25 appointments for immunizations and physicals.
Besides immunizations and physicals, Promise Healthcare will eventually offer low-cost to no-cost primary health, vision and dental services, targeting students and families having trouble accessing traditional health care, Woods said earlier.
School board meetings that have been held at the Eater Junior High building will likely continue there through September, after which they will probably be held at the newly leased building.
Alternative education program
The newly started RISE alternative education program will serve grades five through eight, “primarily for kids who need additional support to be successful or kids who are not as successful as they could be in a traditional setting,” Woods said.
Coming out of the pandemic, the district’s educators recognized that some students actually did better in remote and online learning, which Woods said got the educators thinking about offering an alternative education program for those who do not perform well in a traditional setting.
Said RISE program director DeAndre Henderson: “There are some kids — and it’s a very small population — with anxiety, and some kids who are more self-driven that were very successful with our online program.”
Henderson said those students struggled to continue that success when they returned to in-school classes.
“RISE is an alternative eduction program for anyone who struggles in a traditional environment — some who struggle with behaviors, attendance issues, who ... get lost in big crowds, some with anxiety issues,” Henderson said.
“It’s a small setting that’s meant to change how we do education.”
The program will employ a full-time therapist, three social workers and three certified teachers.
Woods said RCS also hopes to offer a culinary arts program when a kitchen is installed, where students will be involved in meals prep and serving foods.
Henderson said carpentry-related classes could also be offered, with people skilled in those trades coming in to lead woodworking classes, to expose students to career fields.
He said such career samplings can show students how their education is going to connect to their future careers, their future ability to provide for themselves.
“It can show how that math, science and social studies ties to their future, gets them more connected,” Henderson said.
Care program
The building will also be the site for the CARE program, a place a student who is suspended or is eligible for suspension can go and where two certified teachers will work with them on the behavior that got the student suspended and to work on their classroom studies.
Dave Hinton