Palatine Dist. 15 attracts 7 candidates for 3 seats on school board

In one of the most crowded school board races in the Northwest suburbs, seven candidates will jostle for only three available seats in Palatine Township Elementary District 15.

Two incumbents from Palatine - Manjula Sriram and Gerard Iannuzzelli - are vying for a second 4-year term in the April 7 election. The five challengers are Frank Annerino, Zubair Khan, Jessica Morrison, David Gurion and Joshua Perry. Khan and Perry live in Hoffman Estates and the rest in Palatine.

Scott Herr, the third board member whose seat is up, says he will not seek re-election after just one term. He declined to comment Friday on his decision.

Herr, Sriram and Iannuzzelli campaigned together as a slate in 2011. The trio now are a vocal minority on the board and often challenge Superintendent Scott Thompson's recommendations. They also boycotted a photo op after the board received a good governance award that Herr has said the panel didn't deserve.

And they were the only members to oppose a 2015 budget that calls for using reserves to pay for a nearly $4 million shortfall.

"You can't just accept deficit budgets year after year," Sriram said Friday. She thought the district should have been more "proactive" at finding savings and cutting costs.

Sriram, a program director for an information services company and mom to two sons who will graduate from the district next year, said it's "very likely" that she will run with Iannuzzelli as a slate again, but she hasn't yet talked with him or other candidates about teaming up.

She said one of her top priorities is finding a way to pay for urgent construction projects listed in a recent audit of the district's 20 schools.

Although she's still studying the idea, Sriram said the district should first look at using reserves to foot the bill for projects that, if ignored, could pose a safety hazard for students, teachers and visitors to schools. By June 2015, the district's reserves are expected to fall to roughly $52 million.

Gurion, a sales manager at a manufacturing company, says his experience as a parent and as a District 15 graduate make him a good fit for the board. Gurion's two daughters are students at Jane Addams Elementary in Palatine. He was a teacher's aid in a class of special-needs students at Winston Campus Junior High for about four years until 2000.

While Gurion plans to campaign on his own, Annerino, another parent of students in the district, is weighing whether to join a slate of candidates.

Annerino, a mechanical engineering manager for a maker of communication products, said he would work to build cooperation on the board if elected.

"It seems to be a little bit of a confrontational atmosphere," he said, adding that some members of the board "feel that they have been kept in the dark on some issues."

Other board candidates couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

Sriram, who filed her nominating petitions first at 8 a.m. Dec. 15, claimed the top spot on the ballot.

There will be no lottery to determine the order of the rest of the candidates, a Cook County clerk's office spokesman said, but the exact ballot position won't be finalized until February.