Mike McCollum, executive director of two large education service organizations in southwestern Illinois, will take the helm as executive director of the new DuPage Intermediate Educational Cooperative on July 17.
McCollum’s appointment was announced last week by Carol Clifford, chairwoman of the cooperative’s board.
Since 1979, McCollum has been the executive director of the Tenco Regional Education Program, which provides special education services for 120 school districts. McCollum has been executive director since 1985 of Educational Service Center 16 in Belleville, one of the state’s 18 educational service centers.
McCollum, 49, will have a three-year contract, said Clifford, who also is a member of the Woodridge School District 68 school board.
The DuPage cooperative serves nearly 75,000 students in 25 of the 42 DuPage school districts. To join, the 25 districts paid a membership fee of $1.60 per student.
The idea for the cooperative is to form a clearinghouse for member districts, a central service that can provide anything from computers to consultants at reduced prices by tapping the economies of scale. By pooling their resources, members of the cooperative hope to get more for their money than they could on their own.
Such cooperatives are well-established in other states, but in Illinois, the concept is a novelty. In general, Illinois has a tradition of emphasizing local school control. This has resulted in a vast collection of relatively small school districts that share few resources.