Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek this office? What skills, experiences, and perspectives would you bring to the District, and why would those contributions be valuable in the role of School Board member?

Candidate’s video response

I am seeking a seat on the D200 board because I care deeply about OPRF.  I want OPRF to be as strong as possible, always evolving to empower OPRF students to fully engage with the world as it is.

I am a product of public schools, as is my wife, Stephanie, who is the current board president of Beyond Hunger.  We have lived with our two sons in River Forest for more than 10 years.  Our oldest son graduated from OPRF High School in 2018, and our youngest is an OPRF junior. 

I am a CPA and have practiced law for over 30 years.  I have been a partner at Chapman and Cutler LLP for almost 20 years.  I have extensive experience in project finance and contract negotiations and a deep understanding of board roles and responsibilities, including the essential and necessary work a board does with its chief executive.  

I am confident that my experiences and skills will be of substantial value to the D200 board as it faces consequential fiscal choices, negotiates important stakeholder contracts, and makes critical decisions relating to the board’s primary purpose in helping OPRF provide the best education it can to each OPRF student.

2. What are the three biggest challenges or opportunities you expect District 200 to face in the coming years, and how would you work with your colleagues to address these challenges or realize these opportunities?

I see the biggest upcoming board matters to be:

1. Learn from the COVID-19 pandemic.  The pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the most basic aspects of our lives.  All or almost all organizations that we would see as “blue ribbon” entities are revisiting and modifying certain organizational policies and their strategic plans to account for what they have learned from the pandemic.  I propose that D200 should do the same.

2. Make and implement sound fiscal choices.  D200 will be finishing one large capital improvement project and considering more.  It will be negotiating a new teacher contract.  I will offer my skills and experiences with contract negotiations and project finance to help the board make optimal fiscal decisions so that D200 can achieve as many goals as possible with the limited resources available.

3. Teach mindfulness and media literacy.  Media is at the center of the lives of OPRF students.  I believe OPRF should empower students to better understand this media, its meaning, its impact, and its structures.  This would start with teaching students to be mindful of their attention and continue with teaching them how this media operates in their lives, their relationships, and their world.

3. How will you balance competing interests, such as your own deeply-held values and opinions, input from District staff and fellow board members, and diverse views from the community? How would you describe your leadership style and your decision-making process generally? 

I will listen.  I will ask questions.  I will do my best to understand the positions others might have.  I consider it important too to know the context for another’s position, the history involved, and what may be the underlying intent or motive.  When appropriate, I will be empathetic and compassionate.  I will be respectful and open to other points of view.  I will work to get to know the other board members, key OPRF personnel, students with helpful insights and perspectives, and outside leaders in the D200 community.

I will be direct and transparent with my own positions.  I will consider that my own position may not be the best for D200.  I will be creative, seek common ground, and work hard for solutions.

I see myself as a collaborative leader, seeking to make the most of the qualities and skills each person brings to the team.  I also see myself as being able to contribute with hard work and with knowledge and skills gained from my many mentors.

I consider my decision making process to be complex, creative, and, well, lawyerly.  I can make quick decisions if necessary, but I am more comfortable with a diligent, methodical approach.

4. What values would you bring to the budgeting process? What changes do you favor in the process by which the District conducts its budgeting and fiscal planning?

Good budgeting is essential to any organization’s success.  A good budget requires one to recognize resources are limited and choices need to be made.  It needs to be based on the best information available, including historical results, current circumstances, and anticipated events.  Without it, waste and nonoptimal fiscal decisions are inevitable.  

A good budget is in detail sufficient to allow for meaningful and valuable comparisons with actual results.  Actual results should be regularly compared against the budget, with negative variances examined to limit trouble spots.  Budget variance may be necessary or even beneficial in a given circumstance.  However, a good budget process means that such a change will be made consciously and with an awareness of the larger context.

I will advocate for the board putting more time and thought into the budget and the ongoing budget process.  A good budget requires a lot of work.  I think it appropriate for each board member to have some budgeting role.  I also will advocate for specific board members to have explicit responsibilities with respect to the ongoing budget process, so that nothing is overlooked and there is no ambiguity on who should be attending to what.

5. How will you balance the community's desire to decrease the property tax burden with the need to maintain the quality of our schools, create an equitable learning environment for all students, and address facilities issues?

D200 has a rare and remarkable opportunity to improve the education of all OPRF students in a meaningful manner, while also demonstrating OPRF is progressive, smart, and fiscally careful.  OPRF should be a leader in teaching media literacy and mindfulness.  Doing this won’t require any capital expenses or new technology.  It only requires a shift in mindset and some teacher training.

Students today are saturated with media.  Studies have shown that, on average, U.S. teens spend 9 hours a day on digital entertainment, excluding schoolwork.  Media literacy study remains uncommon in  U.S. high schools.  At the same time, for at least 50 years, teaching media literacy - and the recognized importance of doing so - has been constantly expanding in U.S. schools.

Much of the time students spend in media is thoughtless.  Some of our most esteemed universities offer classes on this uncomfortable truth.  As with media literacy, teaching mindfulness in public schools is a growing phenomenon.  Scholarly research findings support teaching mindfulness.  These studies have found that, among other things, mindfulness increases attention, improves interpersonal relationships, and strengthens compassion.  Schools that have implemented mindfulness teaching have found the benefits of this to be priceless.

6. Special education is mandated by federal law. How will you set up structures to ensure ongoing concerns of families engaged with special education are addressed? What do you believe are the biggest issues facing families and children with special needs, and how will you work to see their needs are met?

Many in our community see special education as the pivotal issue for D200.  Students with special needs – and their families – deserve more than just the minimum services required by federal law.  OPRF should provide those, of course, but D200 has the resources to do much more.

OPRF should follow best practices for teaching high school students with special needs.  It should invest in excellent teachers and technology.  It should include special education as an integral part of the whole school, as the school did in its plans for the current capital improvements project.

I know that OPRF does an excellent job in addressing the needs of many of its students with special needs. I will listen to those in our community that believe D200 is not doing enough.  I will engage with them and respond to their concerns.  To best help these families, I will understand the resources available to students with special needs within the school building and the additional available resources outside of the building.  

I will include best practices for students with special needs in D200 budget decisions, and I will be mindful in offering special needs education as a regular item on the D200 board agenda.

7. How do you define equity? Have recent discussions in the larger community informed or changed your thinking? 

Equity is a core value of our community.  We experienced national and local events during the last year that again showed the pressing need for progress on equity issues.  We are right not to deny, ignore, or dismiss these events and the stark reality they show.  It is proper too that we look at systemic biases, both in their general functioning and how such biases are manifest.

We are right to focus on getting results.  I believe our systems of government and local power should be fair and unbiased in how they operate and how they treat our residents.  This includes D200 doing all it can to help each OPRF student receive a fair education that is unbiased in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and social status.  

Achieving equity is not a simple or easy task.  It is made more difficult by the reality that inequities are not the only issue at hand.  For example, D200 also needs to address the pandemic.  It needs to be serious about budgeting and monitoring actual expenses.  I believe the D200 community can best achieve long-term progress on issues of equity, while sustaining diversity, by giving serious attention to all important matters.

8. How do you plan to solicit feedback from people who may be experiencing OPRFHS in a different way than you? What barriers do you believe may exist in this process?

I will attend school events, including artistic performances, sporting events, academic competitions and other academic occasions, different extracurricular affairs, and other happenings where separate parts of the school community may be present.  I will reach out to different organizations and groups in the D200 community.  I will invite discussions and the sharing of experiences.  I will offer to listen, speak, or have a call or a meeting at reasonable times.  I make myself available to meet with members of the D200 community in a public location on a regular basis.  I will respond to all reasonable emails and other communications I receive. 

I will address any perceived biases that may present hurdles to meeting with people and groups in our community.  I will not shy away from meeting with those that perceive me to be different because of where I live, the color of my skin, my apparent economic circumstances, or other outward characteristics.

9. How should the District assess its policies and progress with respect to the opportunity gap? As a Board Member, how will you determine whether the District is succeeding?

We may have differences of opinion on whether the State of Illinois standards are good or bad, but the law directs OPRF to teach to these standards, including the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core Standards.  I believe the school should assess its polices based on these standards, and it should measure progress based on improvements in each student’s knowledge and skills measured against those standards.

OPRF should remove all bias based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or social status in its teaching.  It should do the same in any making any measure of progress.  The teaching, the standards applied, and the measurement of progress should be as equitable as possible for all OPRF students.

The baselines and measures of progress for the opportunity gap should be detailed, rich, and comprehensive.  They should not be so general as to be unhelpful.  Nor should they be limited in a manner that may be used to conceal larger truths.  Importantly, D200 should not be afraid of the truth.  If I am elected to the D200 board, I will decide whether OPRF is getting good results by considering what the data reveals about what all of our students are learning.

10. District 200 Superintendent Joylyn Pruitt is retiring in June 2021, and a search process has been initiated by the current Board. What qualities do you value most when searching for a new superintendent?

The existing board has made the decision to not just initiate the search for a new superintendent but also to choose that person.  Thus, new board members, which I would be, have no vote on the superintendent.

I hope whoever the existing board chooses has experience with bringing mindfulness and media literacy into a high school.  To my knowledge, none of the existing board members have raised this as an experience that they consider important.  At the very least, I hope the new superintendent understands the mediated world in which OPRF students live.  If not, I fear the new board will struggle to achieve much of anything beyond the path that the existing board has fixed.  If the new superintendent does understand this world, I am confident they will see the critical importance of teaching students the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in it.

I hope too that the board chooses someone with substantial experience working in a diverse school, following a budget involving tens of millions of dollars, and managing a faculty that is represented by a strong representative body.  I hope this person is highly regarded, creative, responsive to board directives, and has extraordinary interpersonal skills.

11. What is your impression of D200’s Access for All detracking curriculum redesign program and of detracking efforts generally? How will you handle parent concerns that arise as implementation begins?

200 words are not enough to fairly and fully address the issue of detracking, which many in our community consider to be the proxy for equity.  Yet, a binary choice between tracking and detracking does not alone address – it cannot address - the complexity of issues involved.  Indeed, the preeminent expert on detracking, Jeannie Oaks, recognizes tracking is “used very sloppily to describe a wide variety of programs.” 

Few would disagree with Oaks on her vision that “the fundamental goal of equalizing opportunity is not simply to mix students up, but to increase the quality of curriculum and instruction for everybody in the schools…”  At the same time, Oaks herself acknowledges that parents have “extraordinarily legitimate concerns” that education quality will decrease if the school doesn’t do everything needed to implement “detracking” properly.  

The OPRF administration acknowledges that “data from other schools is mixed.”  OPRF’s own messaging on what the school needs to do to ensure this process is successful has neither been consistent nor resolute.  OPRF’s statement on changes to the plan was short on transparency and completely silent on instruction.  

I hope all community stakeholders can have an honest, good faith conversation on this issue. 

12. Educational and business leaders have begun to use a "cradle-to-career" framework when talking about education. Please discuss the role of District 200 within the “cradle-to-career“ framework.

I am unfamiliar with the cradle-to-grave movement. I am supportive of mentoring of students by private individuals within the confines of properly structured programs. I am also supportive of people in business making long-term commitments to students in public education. I would be glad to engage with any community members that are looking to contribute their treasure or their talents for the benefit of OPRF students. We have more than enough students with the needs to be helped.

13. What lessons learned from the implementation of remote and hybrid learning during the pandemic do you believe will be applicable going forward, even after the pandemic abates?

This is another question that I think needs more than 200 words to fairly and fully address.  First, I think we have to learn yet all of the lessons of remote and hybrid learning.  As I noted above, I offer that the D200 board should review certain school policies and the school’s strategic plan to account for what we have learned from the pandemic, which would include the use of communication technologies for remote learning.

At the same time, some lessons of the pandemic and of remote learning are clear.  One lesson is that communication technologies can be leveraged to create education opportunities for all OPRF students in a potentially game-changing manner.  For example, OPRF might offer classes via remote learning that are otherwise not available.  At the same time remote learning is also clearly not a panacea.  Another lesson is that having, understanding, and using best in class communication technologies is critical – and that equal access to these technologies is essential for equity.  Another is that students’ health and education are inseparable.  This includes both mental and physical health.

Another lesson is that, even with all the wonderful benefits that science brings, much of life remains a mystery.

14. District 200 has taken some steps to move away from policing and surveillance in schools toward restorative justice, mental health supports, and other services in schools. Do you feel these moves have been successful? Why or why not? What work do you believe remains to be done in this area?

I am not the best person to answer this question.  I am not fully aware of the precise steps D200 has taken concerning its security and related systems.  I also need more information on how OPRF has implemented these steps to consider myself well qualified to make a judgment on this topic.  That said, based on what I have learned from students and others in the OPRF community, I believe D200 could further improve the school by moving more resources away from policing and surveillance towards restorative justice and other useful student services.

I know from my legal experience that most police and security systems have cultures that would be difficult to fit with OPRF’s primary purpose of education.  Further, policing and security systems often invite, consciously or unconsciously, individuals who are inclined to search for rule violations.  Indeed, I know of students whose privacy in bathroom stalls has been violated by school security officials who were looking to see if the students were breaching school rules.  It is also my experience that once systems are in place, they are hard to reverse or reform, even after the initial reason for them no longer exists or better systems are available. 

15. Do you see a role for the Board in ensuring that the climate at OPRFHS is welcoming to students in minority populations, whether racial, religious identity, LGBTQ+, etc.? What specific actions or policies would you propose?

I support all D200 policies that ensure the safety of students that are in a minority group or that identify as being in such a group.  More than that, I support all D200 polices that help OPRF celebrate student diversity.  

I would support policies that help the D200 board monitor how OPRF is celebrating diversity and whether it could do more.  I offer that the board agenda should include a regular discussion of whether OPRF is doing all it can to nurture students in all minority groups, including student leaders from different minority groups regularly appearing before the board.  

Diversity is a core strength  of OPRF.  Research on diversity has consistently shown that diversity helps students learn in certain subjects.  It increases innovation.  It provokes new thinking.  As Dr. Katherine W. Philips has written, members in diverse groups “anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: People work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially.”   I support all D200 policies that will raise awareness of diversity at OPRF and its value to all students.

16. District 200 Board members share responsibility for oversight of the Collaboration for Early Childhood. Do you support this example of intergovernmental cooperation? Are there other types of intergovernmental cooperation that you would support?

I strongly support cooperation among government entities.  I would like to explore how D200 can do more of this.  Oak Park and River Forest each have separate organizations devoted to fostering intergovernmental cooperation within their villages.  I would strongly support an organization that would do this for the entire D200 community.  D200 may find valuable opportunities from such a forum.

I strongly support the sharing of capital resources.  OPRF shares resources with the Park District of Oak Park.  Roosevelt and Willard Schools in River Forest are located adjacent to parks that teachers use as part of their curriculum and for extra curricular purposes.  I would like to explore the ways OPRF and other governmental entities could further share resources.  This includes considering sharing arrangements for capital projects not yet done.  

The largest demographic group in D200 by age is seniors.  I would strongly support more engagement between OPRF and seniors or senior organizations.  I don’t think any part of the D200 community is best served when we tend more toward silos rather than away from them.

I would also be interested in exploring structures for supporting sustained engagement that would be essential for successful cooperation with different groups.

• • • • •

[The above answers were supplied on 2/19/21.]