Marnie Navarro: 2025 candidate for Libertyville-Vernon Hills High School District 128 board (4-Year Term)

Bio

Office Sought: Libertyville-Vernon Hills High School District 128 board (Vote for 4)

City: Libertyville

Age: 47

Occupation: Attorney

Previous offices held: None

Why are you running for this office? Is there a particular issue that motivates you?

I am running for a four-year seat on the District 128 board because I am a lifelong proud District 70 and District 128 graduate who returned to Libertyville as a single mother, litigator, to raise my child, who is a current sixth-grader at Highland, predicated primarily on the historical strength of our schools.

I am a firm believer in the value of a public school education; I received a top notch education at Libertyville High School (Class of 1995) that more than adequately prepared me for the rigors and reality of college, law school and a demanding and successful professional career. I was taught by the best of the best, teachers who taught me how to think, not what to think.

I am running for the board because I believe that we can, collectively, return District 128 to its prior academic excellence, and also to restore sound fiscal management of our hard-earned tax dollars to District 128.

I am committed to an unflinching commitment to competence, excellence, merit based hiring, and attracting and retaining the best teachers, as they are the very heart and soul of our district and center of our children’s educational experiences. Education over ideology.

What is the role of the school board in setting and monitoring the curriculum?

It is a primary, express, and enumerated power and duty of the board to set and monitor curriculum. Pursuant to Board Policy 2:20, a “major power and duty” of the board is to “approve the curriculum, textbook and educational services.” Equally important, per Board Policy 1:30, the board, “in active partnership with parents and community, will provide rigorous and effective educational opportunities for all students to achieve their full potential,” “foste[r] excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills, knowledge, citizenship and personal development” (Policy 2:80) and implement “sound fiscal and management practices.”

I feel that District 128 has lost sight of these guiding principles the past 4 years and am stalwartly committed to restoring them. These primary roles should be our guiding principles as we embark upon hiring our new superintendent and entering a period of transition and rebuilding at District 128.

I am firmly committed to restoring, as primary focus, a return to academic rigor at District 128, including the implementation of a standardized grading system in order to ensure our students are prepared for the rigors and reality of college, career and beyond.

Are there curriculum issues within the district that you feel need particular attention from the board?

A major, unresolved and ongoing issue is the lack of standardized grading system. Presently, there is no consistency between courses, within departments, or between campuses. A committee has been working on the issue for a couple years, but our peer districts have long since ripped off the proverbial band aid. COVID is five years past; it is past time that we prioritize and implement a standardized grading system.

Countless parents have told me that their children are struggling in college as they did not develop the study and time management skills and ability to take a high stakes test at District 128. The real world is not unlimited redos and no zeros. Parents move into this community for the schools and over 90% of students surveyed report wanting to attend college.

We owe it to our parents and students to deliver a rigorous education that prepares them for success in college in return for the astronomical property taxes we pay. Also, disparities exist between the two campuses with respect to course offerings. This is why District 128's bungled handling of the APA Act had a disproportionately negative impact; for example, the next most rigorous course at VHHS might not be the same as at LHS.

How do you view your role in confronting policy or curriculum controversies: provide leadership even if unpopular, give a voice to constituents — even ones with whom you disagree, or defer to state authorities?

If elected, I would be one of seven board members. No one board member can (or should) dictate policy or make decisions alone. Rather, this community needs and deserves a competent board of invested professional parents who serve and work together, collaboratively, with the incoming new superintendent, to steer our district out of chaos and through transition and return to the basics- delivering a sound and rigorous education to all our students, and acting as sound fiscal stewards of our hard-earned tax dollars.

I am firmly committed to being visible, accessible and responsive to our students, teachers, parents and community members. As an attorney, I am well equipped to meaningfully analyze and opine as to interaction with ISBE, particularly given the dramatically (and daily) changing landscape with the U.S. Department of Education.

My ability to lead and give voice to our community has been conclusively demonstrated over the past year with my heavy involvement in getting the former superintendent out. It was incredibly time consuming, stressful, and largely thankless work but I am and will continue to be a tenacious advocate for our students, teachers, parents, and taxpayers.

Describe your experience working in a group setting to determine policy. What is your style in such a setting to reach an agreement and manage school district policy? Explain how you think that will be effective in producing effective actions and decisions for your school board.

While I have never previously served on a school board, I have and continue to serve on the district’s Safety Committee and also worked extensively with the administration and superintendent on safety prior to formally sitting on the committee.

In the wake of Uvalde, I assembled a coalition of concerned parents, consulted with outside safety experts, and liaised with the administration to secure our five schools. I am very proud of the dramatic improvement in safety at District 70 which is largely attributable to the exceptional Superintendent Rebecca Jenkins and Dr. Kerri Bongle, but to which I contributed and contribute still.

Also, in my professional career, I have worked on legal teams of inside and outside attorneys, experts, and management. If elected, I would be one of seven board members and would work respectfully and collaboratively with my fellow board members and the new incoming superintendent, our “CEO,” toward our shared common goals of restoring academic rigor and financial accountability to District 128.

What is your assessment of the school district's diversity and equity efforts? Do you support the continuation or enhancement of such programs, or would you rather see them diminished? Please explain your reasoning.

Over the past four years, District 128 has spent millions and invested incredible staffing, time and resources on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” These words, standing alone, sound laudable; in practice, however, they have resulted in incredible waste and liability exposure at D128, without a return on the costly investment (in fact, per our recently released state report card, D128 standardized test scores have declined, including for our <2% African American students, the gap between IEP and non-IEP students is widening, etc.). Put simply, “diversity work” must actually work. District 128's hasn't — and won’t.

It has cost us a fortune and not yielded results. When a policy does not work, the board should critically analyze the data and pivot, not double down on failed policy. Toward that end, our high performing peer districts have invested in building MultiTiered Support System (“MTSS”) over the past 6-10 years. District 128 is way behind the 8 ball and only started planning MTSS in Spring 2024.

Investing in building robust MTSS to support all students so that all students may access the curriculum should be at the absolute top of D128’s priority list. MTSS is the “golden ticket” to equality for all.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

I am intelligent, invested, tenacious and have the professional education, training and experience as a career litigator to add value and legal expertise to District 128.

My advocacy on behalf of the students, teachers and taxpayers over the course of the past year evidences that I will ask the hard questions — and, equally important, insist on getting the answers, pressure test recommendations, do the due diligence and work collaboratively with my fellow board members, the new superintendent, administration, teachers and parents to arrive at the best solutions for our students and best use of our hard-earned tax dollars.

There is value in having a depth and variety of relevant professional expertise on the “bench” of the board. My legal training and career uniquely equips me to meaningfully evaluate the legal advice given to District 128 and spend on outside counsel, both of which are areas with significant room for improvement. Put simply, it saves the district money to have professional experience in house versus outsourcing it, at tremendous cost to our taxpayers. I stand for an unflinching commitment to competence, a return to excellence, and sound fiscal responsibility.

What’s one good idea you have to better your district that no one is talking about yet?

I believe a big part of the problem we've experienced the last four years in District 128 is attributable to the board operating in a silo, relying heavily, if not exclusively, for information from the former superintendent. The teachers spoke out for 15-plus months without being heard or meaningfully engaged in working collaboratively toward solutions.

Additionally, the format of the eternally long board meetings with three-minute public comment at the beginning, before the substance of the presentations, does not lend itself toward meaningful engagement with the parents and community. If elected, I would propose “community” forums where board member(s) host a monthly or quarterly open forum to hear ideas, questions and concerns from students, parents and community members. Direct access and dialogue.

I will be present in the buildings and classrooms, accessible and responsive to teachers. Meetings should be dramatically streamlined; there is tremendous room for improvement in efficiency of work done in committee versus as a whole. Currently, it is prohibitive to working parents to commit to 2- to 4-plus hour meetings on school/work nights and a deterrent to public participation. That needs to change.