Historic women's vote behind creation of District 214

As Northwest Suburban High School District 214 celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, the district's 12,000 students, faculty and others who benefit from its existence can give thanks to the women who lived in this part of Illinois during the early 20th century.

It was women who were largely responsible for creating District 214 through a referendum on March 28, 1914. It was the first election where women in Illinois were allowed to vote on a matter that involved tax dollars.

Women at the time still couldn't vote for governor, senator, congressman or many other offices, but their opportunity to head to the polls in 1914 left a lasting impact on the Northwest suburbs and many thousands of young people since.

A right to vote

The fact that women were allowed to vote at all that day was groundbreaking. Illinois was ahead of much of the country when on June 26, 1913, Gov. Edward Dunne signed the bill giving women the right to vote.

"The jubilant women declared that the example of Illinois would pose a powerful factor in future suffrage campaigns throughout the nation," the Decatur Review wrote.

Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi River to grant women suffrage, although the first opportunity for Northwest suburban women didn't come until eight months later.

It wouldn't be until 1920 that U.S. women won universal suffrage.

Polls were open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 28, 1914. The results were close. Men voted against creating the Arlington Heights Township High School District, 333 to 382.

Women voted in favor, 303 to 240. Overall, the measure passed by just 16 votes.

The results of the referendum were challenged in court, and eight long years would go by - including three trips to the Illinois Supreme Court - before the school board was cleared to start building Arlington High School.

But if women had not been allowed to vote that day, District 214 might not exist, or at least its creation would have been much delayed.

'Is our country short of educated people?'

In the buildup to the election, the whole idea of formalized education, let along creating a centralized high school, was controversial.

"The establishment of a large union school at a convenient central point is both more economical and advantageous than our present antiquated, old-fashioned, unorganized system," the Cook County Herald, forerunner of the Daily Herald, argued in January 1914.

Before township high schools were created, students in Wheeling, Elk Grove and Palatine townships attended classes at home or at District 25 grade schools or went into Chicago, said Barbara Scalet, a volunteer with the Arlington Heights Historical Society.

Many people simply didn't think advanced schooling was needed.

"Is it necessary that every boy and girl take a high school course in order to be successful in this life?" asks an article in the Cook County Herald published in March 1914. "Did George Washington, the father of our country, have anything more than an ordinary schooling? Did Abraham Lincoln have a high school education?"

The same article warned of myriad drawbacks to having a high school - building the school, having to pay teachers, the cost of buses, insurance, and janitorial work.

"Friends, we ask you, who pays for all of this? ... It is the taxpayer, the landlord, who is going to be bled for this. He is not likely to receive any benefit from it."

A neighboring town that had built a high school saw the value of farmland go up to the shocking price of $2 an acre in its wake.

"They didn't want to spend the money," Scalet said. "It was an agricultural community here, and they didn't want to pay for it, and I imagine they didn't see the value in more education.

"The men were farmers. They worked hard. Women (however) saw the importance of education."

Years of legal battle

Even with their votes counted, it would still be years before the vote, and the women's' impact on it, was official.

"The Arlington Heights high school district is in a big muddle and no one seems to know the exact standing of the high school district recently formed," read an article in the Sept. 11, 1914, Cook County Herald.

Shortly after the election, farmers from Elk Grove, Mount Prospect and Wheeling got an attorney who cited 17 blank ballots, which if counted as "no" votes meant the proposition lost by one vote, the Herald reported.

With the results in question, Chicago bond houses would not issue loans to the school district to start construction or begin taxing residents.

On the case's first trip to the Illinois Supreme Court, judges upheld the original election results, tossing out the complaint over the blank ballots.

Next, opponents attacked the results because women had been allowed to vote.

Although Gov. Dunne had signed women's suffrage into law, it didn't allow women to vote in elections establishing new school districts. Many places - including District 214, allowed women to vote anyway. On this issue the Supreme Court declared the high school district illegally formed because the courts had not yet upheld the Women's Suffrage Act.

"The anti-high school party - nearly all the farmers outside school District 25 - are solidly combined to defeat the project. They have the money and will fight in the courts to the bitter end," according to a Jan. 29, 1915, article in the Cook County Herald. "The contest promises to be long and expensive and may make lifelong enemies of neighbors."

As the District 214 case dragged on, the national suffrage movement was gaining ground. When the case went to the Supreme Court for the final time in 1921, all women in the U.S. had been given the right to vote.

Also around that time, the Illinois legislature clarified the laws surrounding the creation of new high school districts.

Finally, in December 1921, in the case's third trip to the Illinois Supreme Court, the justices upheld the Women's Suffrage Act, the creation of township high school districts and specifically the creation of District 214.

Getting the district off the ground

More than eight years after women first went to the polls to vote for a township high school district, the cornerstone of Arlington High School finally was laid in October 1922.

A description of the new school in the Herald said it would be on 11 acres set about 200 feet back from Euclid Avenue and would include a classrooms for laboratories, manual training and domestic science, along with a gymnasium, athletic fields and plots for agricultural work.

The paper even listed the future students by name - all 48 of them.

Since 1922, District 214 has grown to become the second-largest high school district in the state and graduates more than 3,000 students each year.

"We're really a jewel of the community. People move here to have their children go to our schools," said school board President Bill Dussling.

"Things move so fast. The 100 years that has passed. It's truly amazing to see where it started and what it's grown into tody."

As the district's celebrates its centennial with a series of events and commemorations, Dussling said officials won't forget to look back and thank those women who went to the polls and voted 'yes.'

"They were critically important, otherwise the district would not exist," Dussling said. "We're very proud of our history. I can't even imagine what the next 100 years will bring."