By: Diane Benjamin
Follow-up to this story: https://blnnews.com/2025/09/20/controversy-surrounds-unit-5-board-chair-alex-williams/
A taxpayer sent an email to the Unit 5 School Board concerning the comments made by the Board Chair Alex Williams. She received a response. Below is a copied response since a picture of the email would be hard to read, I did include a picture at the end of this story.
Name redacted – As the District’s board vice-president, I am responding to your communication on behalf of our board.
First, my sincerest thanks for expressing your concerns and for providing screenshots supporting your message. As you may know, among the pledges within the state’s board member oath upon being sworn into office is that we shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by fellow board members. While communications shared by our members outside of the board’s official work may be personal in nature, I understand that such remarks – especially when they involve political matters – may leave community members with questions or concerns. Upholding the highest of standards for conduct and behavior is paramount in leading with integrity, and I appreciate your role as an active member in our community in reinforcing these expectations.
The Unit 5 board agrees this is an important responsibility, and any perceived indication otherwise by the actions of any one member is taken seriously. In representing the students and staff of Unit 5, it is important that all board members are able to set aside personal viewpoints in order to make decisions in the best interests of our students, staff and community. As a board, we work to listen and evaluate all perspectives when making tough decisions. We must set aside our personal perspectives to truly hear and understand the multitude and sometimes conflicting perspectives of our constituents prior to making tough decisions.
I share with you that I directly addressed your concerns to our board president, Mr. Williams. I specifically asked if he is able to separate his personal perspectives from faithfully fulfilling his duties as a non-partisan elected official of our community, and if he will continue to pledge honoring the official oath of school board members in Illinois and adhere to board policies. He assured me that he can, and that he will.
I further share with you another pledge of our oath: that we recognize no singular board member has legal authority as an individual to direct actions within the District, and furthermore that decisions impacting our District’s students and staff can be made only by a majority vote at a public meeting. As a board, we will continue to uphold our individual and collective commitments to represent Unit 5 with integrity and our utmost responsibility as board members to the Unit 5 mission of “educating each student to reach personal excellence.”
Respectfully,
Stan Gozur, Unit 5 Board Vice President
The taxpayer sent a response:
You’re kidding right? Did you receive all of the screenshots I sent to Dayna Brown’s email, not just the 1 that I was able to attach to the complaint form? Did you receive any of the other follow-up emails which included the petition for resignation and the online news article? Nearly 300 people so far (in one day) have signed a petition demanding Mr. Williams’ resignation. I’m pretty sure this is not the last you’re going to hear about it. Just exactly how can such hate and divisiveness be “set aside”? I would request a credible explanation on that. Based on the board’s inaction, I will go ahead and file a formal complaint with ROE #17 as I was advised to do.
As of this morning the original petition has 381 signatures. Since Unit 5 is “educating” the next generation, there is no reason signers have to live in Unit 5. Alex Williams is making decisions that affect their education and therefore who they grow up to be. Since the former DEI director, Dr. Shelvin, is still employed at Unit 5 with a revised title, is identity politics dividing by race still practiced? Is hate for Christians who believe in judging people based on character forbidden? Are conservative students vilified as low information in need of re-education?
Stan Gozur claims his response represents the consensus of the Board. Obviously diversity of thought doesn’t exist on that Board. The creator of the petition had this response:
Alex Williams’ “deplorable” and “cult” insults degrade our community, yet the board’s unapologetic response dismisses us. Disparaging other groups like this would spark outrage; we deserve the same respect.
If you haven’t signed, do it now: https://www.change.org/p/demand-the-resignation-of-alex-williams
The next School Board meeting is October 15th. Concerned parents need to be there.
Picture of the Gozur email:
This is what happens when government schools board candidates, all leftists, run unopposed in the April 1st election this past spring. Unit 5, D87, all of he candidates on the ballot were incumbents or pro DEI, PRO tax and spend newcomers. They all won the April 2025 election in November of 2024, because no one filed to run against the and have a competitive election. It’s the opposite of democracy: they filed and declared themselves the candidate, and immediately won the future election by doing so.
They think they have a mandate for divisive, anti-christian, pro tax, pro spend, CRT/DEI because they are a self sustaining echo chamber.
The “silence is violence” crowd will also win out over the “don’t tread on me” folks. Run for office. Donate to candidates. Don’t be afraid of power, of taking the institutions back.
Good people don’t run for office in BN because they know it is a waste of time. If you worked inside this structure like I did you find out quickly that everything is pre-determined by the local Clique and the elected officials are just there to rubber stamp it. The school boards are made up of people chosen to run by the teachers union and municipal officials are chosen by the unions and the municipal employees. Why try to run and make a difference when you are outnumbered on your board or council by 4 to 1 margins or higher? Elections in Normal are fixed through mail-in ballots and the rest are fixed by the local Democrats who make sure they rule the election judge pool compliments of the Laborers Hall. People in BN don’t care about local elections anyway because they never vote. Too concerned about getting drunk or high or finding a divorcee to bed down with at the local bars. It won’t matter in ten or twenty years anyway when BN is nothing but one huge ghetto unfit to live in for anyone.
I wonder if the voting sentiment isn’t changing given what has come to light in the past months and especially recently? There may be a wave we haven’t realized yet. It takes the moral majority a lot to get active. An awful lot has happened. We will see.
Next election is after the midterms. They will forget by then
I admire your optimism but BN history says otherwise. Even if there was some surge in conservative voting, the ingrained Clique and the Laborers Hall leadership would figure a way to screw it over. Koos and his gang get helped by ISU making sure there are plenty of places for out of town students to vote on or near campus. When Renner got elected he made sure there was a voting precinct on the IWU campus and advertised it on campus. The Laborers Hall have been transporting life’s losers to the polls forever telling them who to vote for in exchange for beer and cigarettes. I saw that number more than a few times near Six Points Road.
I don’t know. I think we’ve reached a point that history isn’t a good indicator of future voting. Tectonics political movements are afoot. As far as ISU is concerned Charlie’s movement has electrified the conservatives in campuses.
The only place that Unit5.org currently references their racist “Equity Action Plan” is on the Board of Education’s page. Did they not get the memo or did they choose to ignore it?
According to U5’s Equity Audit, Equity proclaims that –
– America was founded on racism and is CURRENTLY a racist nation
– Education and all American institutions are “systemically” racist. (WITHOUT PROOF)
– Students are either helpless victims or unjustly rewarded oppressors – Therefore:
– we will distribute resources based on color of skin, or other identities we choose, so that we can enforce equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity. Civil Rights law is canceled.
These concepts are the basis of Alex William’s comments and why The Board of Education is activist based, not educationally based.
Parents need to stand up.
It does not matter how many signatures you can get for two reasons:
Firstly, a petition for a Unit 5 Board Member should only be signed by people who are currently involved some way with Unit 5. . . Family, occupationally, in the region, etc. This makes sense because not only are these the people who are affected by the board member, but also because these are who elected them.
Secondly, it comes down to this: the local GOP cannot seem to organize enough to put a successful candidate out. Until they learn how to win an election, it will stop at that: some redundant petition. Sorry that McLean County Republicans are too busy selling their office furniture to send a coherent, good candidate out!
GOP falsely believes nonpartisan elections are nonpartisan. The Board will ignore the petition just like Town of Normal does. Notice local media doesn’t care?
That last part is exactly it and I’ve been saying that for a long time. Their social media is poorly run, often riddled with spelling errors and missing information. I’ve noticed events held in the middle of the day during the week – great for retired people, not so great for making sure working people and younger people can attend/be engaged with the party. Running failed candidates in multiple elections, then wondering why their candidates lost when it’s not even the first time the voters rejected them. There’s huge opportunity available and they can’t seem to see how to capitalize on it. It should be shameful, but they seem to have no sense of shame or desire to do better — only to complain about the county once they lose and have ill-spent donors’ money. These next local elections could turn the tide away from the blue wave we’ve seen, but what is more likely is that the local GOP will fail to grasp what could be right in their hands.
Education and all American institutions are “systemically” racist
Seriously they (Democrats) built that and they admit it.
If Alex Williams thought he was so correct then why did he remove it? I presume their pronouns are he, him, etc. The truth is his opinion/comments are everything he accuses other of doing. No surprise there. Is he even employed? If he is he needs to be shown the exit door ASAP. It seems to me most if not all employers can terminate based on your social media comments the last I knew.
Country Companies doesn’t seem to care