Arlington Heights family and District 214 officials were at White House during historic Biden-Trump meeting
On a historic day when two presidents met in the Oval Office of the White House, an Arlington Heights family and a group of Northwest Suburban High School District 214 officials were at an invitation-only education summit down the hall.
The Wednesday meeting between Joe Biden and Donald Trump slightly overlapped with the Classroom to Career Summit that took place that morning in the East Room.
The local attendees saw Biden speak ahead of his scheduled meeting with Trump, who attendees say they did not see during their visit. In fact, the education summit was moved up an hour to accommodate the fireside chat between the political rivals.
“We were surprised,” Superintendent Scott Rowe said of getting the White House invite. “To be caught off guard about this would be an understatement.”
The invitation — from Biden and First Lady Jill Biden — follows the latter’s visit to Rolling Meadows High School in November 2022 and the subsequent invite of student Kate Foley of Arlington Heights to be her guest at the State of the Union address in February 2023.
The Biden administration’s emphasis on educational pathways — leading to jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and other fields — vibes with District 214’s Career Pathways program, which provides students a chance to explore various careers through specialized courses and workplace experiences.
Attendees of the White House event this week included Foley, now a senior at Rolling Meadows; her brother, a freshman; their mother Dana; Principal Megan Kelly; teacher Elizabeth Stavros; Rowe; Associate Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Laz Lopez; Director of Community Engagement and Outreach Pat Mogge; and board President Alva Kreutzer.
Foley, who was sitting in the front row of the East Room, was the first shoutout of the first lady at the podium.
After a round of applause from the 200 attendees — a group that included community college presidents, workforce development leaders and other officials — Jill Biden looked over to her husband and said, laughing, “Well, Joe, that started our day off right, didn’t it?”
The White House invitation arrived in District 214’s Arlington Heights office the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 7. That was less than two days after Trump, the former Republican president, secured enough votes to return for a second term.
Days later, invitees learned the Biden-Trump meeting would also take place Wednesday.
The Bidens addressed the roomful of educators between 10:09 and 10:33 a.m. ET; the outgoing Democratic president’s meeting with the former and soon-to-be-president was roughly between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
As Biden met with Trump, the secretaries of the departments of Education, Transportation, Labor and Commerce addressed the room.
Around noon, the District 214 contingent departed the White House for the Department of Education, which hosted a series of panel discussions.
Kreutzer, the longtime school board member from Elk Grove Village, initially thought the invitation to Washington, D.C. might be spam. But it was real, and a day after the visit, the experience was still settling in for Kreutzer.
“It was awe-inspiring to me to be standing there realizing that I’m in the White House and that I’m looking at a president because I’ve never seen a president before,” she told fellow board members at their meeting Thursday night. “I reminisced what my parents thought if they were still around about me being in the White House. My mom getting her citizenship in 1960 and so proud to be an American and all that stuff just got me very emotional during the day.”