Nearly a dozen people applied for a short-term appointment on the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board of Education following the recent resignation of board member Dathan Paterno, according to the district’s superintendent.
The board received 11 applications for the vacant seat between Jan. 24 and Feb. 3, District 64 Superintendent Laurie Heinz said at a meeting Monday night. Paterno resigned his post on Jan. 23 after he was rebuked by members of the District 64 community for a controversial tweet about the Women’s March on Washington that took place the prior weekend.
Monica Wojnicki, a Franklin School PTO member and former adjunct professor of health careers at Harper College in Palatine, filed to run for a seat on the board and also applied to the board vacancy. However, according to the Cook County Clerk’s website, her filing has been removed.
The other individuals who applied for the appointment include Terry Cameron, Matthew Gilgunn, Chandra Kearney, Terry Krahl, Alan Martin, Denise Pearl, Ginger Pennington, Elissa A. Reiner, Joan Sandrik and Larry Woodard, according to information obtained from the district.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the district had not provided resume information for the applicants despite requests for the information.
Aside from Wojnicki, none of the other candidates for the vacancy had filed papers to run for a seat on the board in April, according to the clerk’s listings.
Heinz said the district is obligated to fill the seat by March 9. The board is slated to interview 10 of the 11 candidates who applied for the position during open session at a meeting scheduled for Feb. 13. One of the applicants was not available the evening of the interview, Heinz said.
Board members will deliberate during a closed session to follow the interview, and officials will vote on the appointment at their Feb. 21 meeting.
Paterno’s term is set to expire in April, and unless the chosen appointee is elected to the board during the upcoming spring election, that person will serve in the position for only a few weeks until the new member is sworn into office in May.
The controversy over Paterno’s use of social media, and one tweet in particular in which the former board member referred to participants in the Women’s March as “vagina screechers,” prompted the district’s elected officials to revisit their policies.
“The events of the weekend of Jan. 20 cast a harsh light on board conduct, governance and regulations,” board President Anthony Borrelli said. He added that further concerns “have cropped up” regarding board member activity prior to the November election.
Borrelli presented several suggestions for revisions to the board’s policies. He recommended the board include the text of the Illinois Association of School Board’s code of conduct within its list of policy rules in addition to several other adjustments. Borrelli also suggested the board amend one part of the IASB code to include the language: “I will take no private action that might compromise the Board or administration through speech, deed, written or social media and will respect the confidentiality of privileged information.”
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Borrelli said he’d like to add the words “through speech, deed, written or social media” to make clear that “through whatever means you will not impugn the board.”
He said legal counsel for the district had not vetted the additional language.
Officials also spoke at length about potential revisions to the elected body’s code of self governance, including a process by which to “censure” board members if they are found by a majority of the board to have violated their policies. In this context, board member Tom Sotos said the term “censure” refers to “a strong and vehement expression of disapproval.”
The proposed steps, which have not yet been vetted or approved by district legal counsel, include giving the board president explicit authority to approach a member about possible code violations, discuss the matter with the rest of the board in closed session and, if deemed necessary, deliberate on the issue and potentially censure the individual during an open meeting.
“My fear is this here may stifle a board member from being who a board member would normally be,” Sotos said in reference to the proposed policy change.
Borrelli said it is incumbent upon officials to listen to and respect one another’s opinions and ideas. Any final decisions about whether to censure a member, he said, would be made “from a consensus of the board.”
“The board is elected as representatives of the community, and you’d hope and like to believe the people and the attitudes of the board are reflective of the community,” Borrelli said.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.