Voters change entire make up of District 57 board
Michael Berry, Karen Nejdl, Sann Knipple and Martin Malone didn't just win seats on the District 57 school board last week - they now have the majority, and possibly control of the board.
On April 7, Mount Prospect Elementary District 57 voters elected the four newcomers and removed the lone incumbent who was running for election.
Unofficial vote totals showed Berry with 1,951 votes; Nejdl with 1,810; Knipple with 1,751 votes and Malone with 1,679. Incumbent Joann Harms, first elected in 2005, lagged a couple of hundred votes behind, with 1,474 votes.
With the change in leadership, a majority of the board is now in favor of moving the district's first-graders to Westbrook School to complete an earlier plan to turn it into an early childhood center. However, most incoming board members agree that move probably won't happen until 2010-2011 at the earliest.
The most pressing topic will be what do with Fairview school principal job. In March, the District 57 school board decided not to renew Principal April Jordan's contract - a decision that upset many Fairview parents.
The new board members will officially take over on May 4. After they are sworn in, Berry expects they'll be able to review the closed-door session minutes that led the board to decide not to renew Jordan's contract.
"I'll want to have access to all the information I can first," he said. "But right now, speaking only as a Fairview parent, it seems to me April Jordan was doing a good job. I had no reason to believe her contract wasn't going to get renewed."
Without reviewing those minutes, Berry couldn't say if he'd try to get Jordan rehired once he was on the board.
"Anything is possible," he said.
Nejdl called Jordan "a wonderful person" and said she would consider hiring her back.
"I wouldn't be opposed to it," Nejdl said. "I don't know legally what can or can't be done, but I do know it's a still a hot-button issue with the community."
Knipple said the sitting board members should have followed the superintendent's recommendation, which was to renew Jordan's contract.
"That's what the superintendent is there for. The school board hires him and sets goals for him and then he's supposed to take the ball and run with it," Knipple said.
Superintendent Bruce Brown is interviewing people for the Fairview School principal job this week and next week. Eventually, he will pick which candidate for the job will go before the school board. Brown declined to comment about when that will happen or if the decision will go before the board before May 4.
Brown will be leaving his post this summer. In February, the school board hired Peggy Kaufmann as the new District 57 superintendent. Her first day will be July 1. Kaufmann is currently serving as the assistant superintendent for instructional services in Community Consolidated School District 54 in Schaumburg.
The District 57 school board will meet once - on Thursday, April 17 - before swearing in the new board members on May 4. That's not enough time to hire a new Fairview principal, said Harms, the outgoing board member.
"Nothing has been presented to me on that," she said. "I'm not aware of that happening."
Malone couldn't be reached on Monday.