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Dist. 204 voters choose consistency in electing 3 incumbents

Indian Prairie Unit District 204 will keep all of its elected leaders in place after voters Tuesday returned incumbents Lori Price, Mark Rising and Justin Karubas to the school board.

Price, the board's president, received 6,114 votes, Rising got 5,604 and Karubas finished with 4,689 in unofficial results from Tuesday's election with all 84 precincts in DuPage and Will counties reporting.

Price, 49, of Aurora, said the district in parts of Naperville, Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield will be well-served by retaining experienced board members.

"We're obviously very pleased to have all of us back on the board to have that consistent leadership," Price said Tuesday night. "We've been doing some things very well and I think now that we have that consistent leadership, we're not going to miss a beat."

The victories for current board members mean the district will retain the same leadership as it rounds out the first year of new Superintendent Karen Sullivan's tenure, completes the installation of partial air conditioning systems at 19 elementary schools and negotiates a teachers union contract to replace a deal that expires at the end of this school year.

The incumbents beat challenger Renata Sliva of Naperville, a 56-year-old stay-at-home mother who has critiqued the board on implementation of a curriculum aligned to the Common Core state standards and on a procedure of letting each school's principal and parent-teacher association choose which holidays will be celebrated in the classroom.

Sliva got 3,270 votes in Tuesday's election, but it wasn't enough to unseat any of the officeholders who represent the district.

Instead Price will continue to lead along with Rising, a 46-year-old sales manager of Aurora, and Karubas, a 41-year-old Naperville attorney and District 204 alum. Price said the board members are used to grappling with financial uncertainty and late payments from the state, which will help as the district sets future budgets.

"I think we work well together and we're going to do some great things for the district," Price said.

Mark Rising
Justin Karubas
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