On Election Day in March, two Washington Elementary School 5th graders were walking down the hall when they ran into an elderly gentleman who had just voted in a nearby classroom. The man turned toward the Wheaton students, pointed his finger like a gun and winked.
The incident posed no danger, but it caused enough consternation among school officials that they reported it to Wheaton police. And the episode, though rare, has helped spur a statewide discussion about whether educators should bow out of the time-honored tradition of opening their schoolhouse doors on Election Days.
Illinois schools have for decades served as primary polling places in many communities. But with heightened sensitivities about school security, many educators are wrestling with how to balance the needs of the electorate with the safety of the students.
“It’s somewhat ironic,” said Supt. Gary Zabilka of Puffer-Hefty Elementary School District 69 in Downers Grove. “On the one hand, we are beefing up security to keep people out of our schools. But then two days a year we let everybody and their brother into our buildings. It makes me a bit nervous.”
Election officials in Kane, DuPage and Cook Counties say there has never been a serious Election Day school-security breach. But an increase in concern about potential problems persuaded election officials statewide to organize a task force to look into the school-safety issue. Robert Saar, director of the DuPage County Election Commission, said the task force will meet this summer to examine options, such as closing schools on Election Day or asking districts to schedule teacher institute days then.
“The one thing that’s an absolute is that elections won’t run in this part of the state without schools, without some radical inconvenience or change in the way we conduct elections because too many people vote atschools,” said Saar, who will serve on the task force. “Chicago, Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, Will–all of them are very heavily dependent on schools. Somewhere around 35 percent to 45 percent of the voters … vote in schools, and we can’t do without them.”
State law requires that publicly funded facilities, such as schools, libraries and park districts, be available as polling sites upon request of election authorities. Bernadine Murphy, chief deputy clerk in Kane County, said schools are the most logical choice for voting booths because they are centrally located and are accessible to the disabled. Eliminating schools from the mix “would be a great loss,” she said.
“What would the option be?” she said. “It would probably expedite electronic voting, I guess. They would certainly have to consider another system or maybe more absentee voting or combining precincts. It would be a major problem.”
But voting inside schools, in some cases, has become a major problem for educators.
Unnerved by recent school violence, educators across the state have spent millions on elaborate security systems to keep students safe, from installing metal detectors and security cameras to insisting on ID badges to posting police officers in hallways. Even the smaller school districts have gone to great lengths to keep strangers from their buildings.
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But on Election Day, those security measures are sometimes rendered useless as voters often are allowed to wander, unaccompanied, into schools, sometimes deep inside buildings. School officials also complain that voting can disrupt the school day and cause parking and traffic headaches.
School officials across the region have come up with various solutions. Chicago Public Schools post school security guards at polling stations. And Palatine-based School District 15 has canceled classes on the November Election Day, making it a teacher institute day.
But many other districts are grappling with the problem.
Take Tinley Park-based Kirby School District 140. The district has spent nearly $100,000 on a safety system that allows visitors to enter schools only through the front door and only after being buzzed in. But on Election Day, doors in the backs and sides of buildings are opened to the voting public.
When district officials polled the community about the issue, nearly 90 percent of those responding said having polling sites in schools makes them nervous. Assistant Supt. Robert Andersen said he notified Cook County election officials about their concerns but got a chilly reception.
“The election code does indicate that schools and other public buildings are accessible for elections, so I guess we have a problem there,” Andersen said. “If we say, `No, we don’t want to be a polling place,’ and they say, `Yes, you have to be open,’ well, I guess they have that power.”
Andersen said his district has organized a safety committee that will try to devise alternatives, such as posting a police officer at each polling site or finding ways to cordon off the polling site.
Wheaton Warrenville School District 200 officials also are discussing such alternatives on the heels of the Washington Elementary incident. But district spokeswoman Denie Young said officials find themselves in a quandary.
“These schools do belong to the community, and we want to do everything we can to make it convenient for the community to use the schools,” Young said. “On the other hand, our main concern has to be the safety of our students.”
Like Young, other school officials agree that allowing voters into a school has its benefits.
“For many people, Election Day is the only time they get to come into the school and see how their tax dollars are being spent,” said Sharon Henderson, with Hinsdale School District 181. “We are glad to open our doors and let the community have a connection to the school.”