Letter: No friend to teachers

As a teacher for 27 years, I have never before been targeted by my own elected state official. For over a year, Deanne Mazzochi has smeared my professional reputation and others for political gain.

In addition, her education platform continues to reflect hypocrisy. Her constituents should be aware that their state representative, Mazzochi, has attacked teachers with lies, disinformation, and scorn at school board meetings, on social media, in private emails to board members and administrators, and in right-wing web pages, radio and fake news publications.

While claiming she is s advocating for curriculum "transparency," Mazzochi's rhetoric falsely asserts that teaching U.S. History from multiple viewpoints is "biased curriculum." In addition, she simultaneously opposes social emotional learning for our students. She has spread disinformation that fake activities and assignments exist, lied in public comments, worked to privately ban nonfiction books and novels and called on Elmhurst public schools to "clean house" and fire teachers.

Mazzochi has taken her cues from a small, but nationally orchestrated, well-funded minority determined to turn classrooms into arenas for wedge issue culture wars. The notion that calling for book bans, targeting educators, and borrowing from a far-right playbook might be smart politics for a community is distressing and frightening. The pandemic and the past several years have polarized citizens and severed relationships in our communities, and Mazzochi has played an immense role by rousing grievance, fueling unnecessary fear and touting the unfounded argument that schools have been ideologically compromised.

An easy victory for her would not bode well for us or any community that is rooted in a neighborly, family-oriented culture with sensible values. Please vote for Jenn Ladisch Douglass on Nov. 8. She is a "mom, a lawyer, and an advocate," but also a practical and ethical candidate we can trust.

Lindsey LaForte DiTomasso

Clarendon Hills