The inescapable truth of unserious school board candidates

It is happening again in Oak Park and River Forest; a candidate for OPRF district 200 high school board is in the race because he was asked to run against someone.  OPRF district 200 write-in candidate David Schaafsma told the Chicago Tribune he was asked to run as an overt effort to block others seeking board seats in an April 2025 election. In this newsletter, E3 points out recent examples of how political motivations behind unserious candidates are winning, and how students and families are the real losers. 

There is nothing inherently political about teaching reading, writing, or arithmetic, about playing sports, creating art, or learning to make music. Just like there is nothing inherently political about researching the best way to do these things. It was school officials that Sold a Story to parents and families on “balanced literacy,” not Lucy Calkins duping naive school officials.  Betrayal may be an understatement, considering it was parents and families paying school salaries to avoid calamities like this.  An unfortunate trend in Oak Park and River Forest suggests the unserious candidate will prioritize politics over reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Most recently, Oak Park resident David Schaafsma announced his unseriousness as a write-in candidate when he told the Tribune “they encouraged me to try and get on the board as a write [in] candidate, texted me and wrote to me, they encouraged me to do this.”  Schaafsma works as Director of the English Education program at UIC, training students to become high school English teachers. You might guess his interest is closing the 50 percent gap in reading proficiency between black (26%) and white (76%) students at OPRF high school, but it wasn’t.  Why so unserious?

In short, D200 candidate Nate Mellman demonstrated better leadership than anyone at OPRF high school by leading 100+ other residents in denouncing antisemitism and filing a complaint against three teachers with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau.  The complaint describes specific examples of how these teachers condoned the October 7th Hamas attack and repeatedly promoted antisemitism on social media and with students.  It details the inactivity and self-preservation of board president Cofsky and superintendent Johnson, the school officials that gave this hate a comfortable home at OPRF.  Ultimately, one teacher named in the complaint was paid to resign their position at OPRF. 

Across Harlem Avenue, River Forest District 90 school officials offered hate a home in the 2021 school board election. This kind had board members Rich Moore, Katie Avalos, Calvin Davis, Judy Deogracias, Barbara Hickey, Nicole Thompson, and Stacey Williams refusing to denounce candidate intimidation and abhorrent behavior of citizens.  Candidate Hall's campaign was focused on educational excellence and sound finances.  "Equity" was something that deserved more questions and this caused the fuss.  Enter Sarah Eckmann, the board’s unserious candidate who described being begged to run against Hall.  Hall collected more votes than Eckmann although he withdrew after a campaign of intimidation and no support from the sitting D90 board. On the board, Eckmann would advocate for more masking, fewer days of instruction, and advocated for unproven curricula and instruction.  She called this “equity” and chose not to run in 2025.

You can't make this stuff up.  Staying with River Forest, in 2019 one candidate took to social media proclaiming, “I am the board’s candidate”.  Katie Avalos acknowledged having no plans to run until getting the call just two days before the filing deadline.  She would run against candidate Lefko who was unchallenged on the two-year ticket when incumbent Cal Davis switched to run for a four-year seat.  Lefko had a history of asking easy questions school officials could not answer. 

As the D90 board’s communications director, Avalos frequently took to social media to deny and distract from changes now connected to delays in student learning. She held that position when D90 was in violation of the IL Open Meetings Act.  Avalos advocated for more remote teaching during covid, more years under the haunting effects of Lucy Calkins literacy, and voted to pre-pay five years for a worse performing math curriculum.  She called this “equity” and will run in 2025 seeking 10 years of service.

The inescapable truth is not everyone has the same understanding of the purpose of public schools.  Not everyone is motivated by the best interests of students and families.  In Oak Park and River Forest IL, a new breed of school officials has traded individual academic potential for something they call “equity”. 

Ask ten people to define “equity” and you will get ten different answers.  The metrics do not lie, "equity” as a purpose is an abject failure.  It is a purpose so different from reading, writing, and arithmetic, so destructive to individual academic potential, so divisive, and so contrary to what parents want, that perpetuating it requires safeguarding with bad behavior, unserious candidates, and self-serving leadership styles. 

Perhaps this election cycle residents will remove a few more monkeys from what has become a political playground.  One way to do this may be asking candidates to provide a one sentence response on the purpose of school? 

E3's answer...Long live reading, writing, and arithmetic!

It's E3, where equity really does mean fairness.

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