After the current successes of two Lockport High School District 205 board candidates with hard-line positions on banning books and regulating conversations about intercourse training and race in faculties, some equally conservative candidates are attempting their luck in 2025.
Eleven candidates are working for 4 four-year board positions and 5 are working for 2 two-year positions inside Lockport 205.
The district noticed two candidates backed by the conservative group We The Parents Illinois win seats on the board final 12 months, Martin Boersma and Sandra Chimon Rogers. However, neither candidate completed his time period, as Boersma resigned seven months into his time period and Chimon Rogers died in June after a long-term sickness.
Candace Gerritson and Lance Thies have been appointed to the vacant seats and each are looking for to carry these seats in April.
“We have an uncommon election,” Lockport 205 Superintendent Robert McBride mentioned, because of adjustments in board seats between election years. According to him, the nominations should be voted on within the subsequent election cycle, which is why there will probably be so many open seats subsequent 12 months.
While the plethora of open positions represents a lack of conservative ideology on the board, some candidates hope that 2025 presents new alternatives for individuals who help higher parental involvement at school choices, together with pupil studying supplies. They embrace candidate Theresa “Tammy” Hayes, who was beforehand endorsed by We The Parents in her unsuccessful bid for Will County Council District 92, and Will County Republican Central Committee Vice Chairman James “Jay” Roti.
Both additionally filed to run for the Homer Glen Village board, however had been just lately faraway from that race after the Homer Glen elections board decided they can’t run for each positions. Roti mentioned those that had been eliminated are looking for to reinstate their names by way of the county court docket system.
Hayes didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. The group We The Parents represents a “small group of oldsters” who stay within the Lockport, Homer Glen and Crest Hill college districts and are attempting to fight what they see as a “lack of management” of their youngsters’s training, based on the organization website. The group helps values similar to fiscal accountability, excessive educational requirements and parental involvement in pupil well being care choices, and seeks to stop “wokeness and political ideology” from coming into school rooms.
Hayes’ bio on the web site states that she believes “our faculties want group consideration as a result of they play such an necessary function in our day by day lives and in getting ready our youngsters for the longer term.”
“I hope to realize this by focusing my efforts on fiscal accountability, strengthening robust teachers in core topics, and constructing robust mum or dad involvement and productive relationships with academics,” his bio states.
Roti was a member of We The Parents final 12 months, however mentioned he will probably be unbiased from the group in 2025.
“All of them had been involved mother and father going to conferences,” mentioned Roti, whose three youngsters had been all porters for Lockport 205. “And that group actually did the work on the time, serving to the group and getting mother and father concerned.”
We The Parents didn’t reply to requests for details about sponsorships for candidates working in 2025. Roti mentioned his platform contains creating a system that alerts mother and father when college students seek the advice of “express supplies” within the college library. These embrace “something from violence to sexual abuse to drug use, what you need,” Roti mentioned.
“If it comprises express materials, as a mum or dad I need to know if my minor youngster has been uncovered to it,” Roti mentioned.
Roti additionally mentioned he desires the board to be extra lively in approving books for inclusion within the college curriculum to stop college students’ publicity to delicate content material within the first place.
Superintendent McBride mentioned he doesn’t consider the district requires adjustments to its curriculum concerning what college students learn and what they’re taught.
“We have a reasonably sturdy, open and clear course of for the way we undertake the curriculum, how we undertake the supplies,” McBride mentioned. “We do not actually see it as a problem proper now.”
Outside of the conservative sphere, incumbent Veronica Shaw received re-election in 2023, and her four-year place is the one non-ballot seat in April.
Other candidates working for a four-year time period embrace incumbent Lou Ann Johnson, Thomas “Tommy” Hill, Scott Nyssen, Wendy Streit, Paul Lencioni, Eric Nush, Zyan Navarra and Michael Deane. Those looking for a two-year time period are incumbent Ann Lopez-Caneva Michaelene O’Happelloran, Lance Thies, James A. Shake and Ron Farina.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
