DECATUR â The recent school board election was historic in a national sense.
Banks is a Decatur native and graduate of Eisenhower High School, where she was active in student government, the Superintendent s Youth Advisory Council, and served on a committee to study the then-new uniform requirements in the high schools and make changes to the dress code in response to student requests.
In a 2012 Herald & Review story about those uniform requirements, Banks said students must learn to speak up and make their voices heard and she s been making hers heard ever since.
Banks was one of four candidates elected to the board Tuesday in a race that featured seven candidates, none of which were incumbents.
City in Illinois elects country’s first Black trans woman to a school board Muri Assunção
A 25-year-old woman made history this week after becoming the country’s first Black openly transgender woman elected to a school board.
On Tuesday Alana Banks became one of four new school board members in Decatur, a city in central Illinois, about 180 miles south of Chicago.
Banks ran on policies that include a safe return to the classroom, the creation of a permanent e-learning option, sexual and mental health education, HIV/AIDS awareness, as well as a curriculum that includes LGBTQ, African-American and Latinx history.
Equality Illinois lauds election of Alana Banks, first Black trans woman on a school board herald-review.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from herald-review.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published April 7, 2021 •
Updated on April 7, 2021 at 2:51 pm
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Municipal elections were held across Illinois on Tuesday, with voters heading to the polls around the state to make their voices heard in local races impacting their communities.
While state law allows mail-in ballots to be counted for up to two weeks after they arrive, provided they are postmarked by Election Day, county election officials responsible for tabulating votes released preliminary results after polls closed Tuesday night. Get the answer to your most-asked COVID vaccine questions on our mobile NBC 5 Chicago app. Download it here for iOS or Android.
Results for each Chicago-area county can be found at the links below:
Watch now: Low turnout expected in Macon County local races herald-review.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from herald-review.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.