D-205 Incumbents Win New Terms: Election Results

ELMHURST, IL — The Elmhurst School District 205 board has taken its share of heat in the last year because of the controversy over reopening schools.

Despite that, the two board members seeking to stay in office prevailed in Tuesday's election. Six candidates were vying for three of the seven seats on the board.

Board member Jim Collins led the pack with 3,843 votes, followed by newcomer Athena Arvanitis with 3,614 and school board President Kara Caforio with 3,187, according to unofficial election results. The others are Laurel Schrementi with 2,644, Gordon Snyder with 2,629 and Marie Gall with 1,967. All precincts have reported.

The third board seat was held by Margaret Harrell, who decided against running again. The new face on the board is Arvanitis, an assistant principal at New Trier High School.

Collins and Arvanitis were the first endorsed by the Reopen D205 group. The group later announced its support for Snyder as well.

No candidate emerged as a critic of the Elmhurst School District 205 board in the months leading up to Tuesday's election. At the same time, a movement to reopen the schools became increasingly critical of both Superintendent Dave Moyer and the board.

Proponents of a full reopening have targeted much of their anger at Superintendent Dave Moyer, but some has been reserved for the school board.

As it happens, Moyer is no longer an issue. He resigned last week, three months ahead of schedule. He had already planned to leave in the summer to take a superintendent's job in Upstate New York.

While full in-person learning is expected to return later this month, many still argue the district mishandled the issue. They point to the fact that local private schools and other districts have offered more in-person learning all along.

A local Facebook page, Reopen D205, now has more than 1,500 members. One candidate who helped organize the Facebook page dropped out of the race.

In the last few months, the Reopen D205 group has held two protests outside school board meetings. The last one was in mid-March, when participants chanted, "Moyer must go!"

In response to a Patch questionnaire, Collins, who has served on the board since 2009, was the most pointed in his evaluation of the district's reopening plan.

"Hindsight is 20/20, but I think the school district could have done a much better job of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic," Collins said.

In the questionnaire, he said he has recommended since July that the superintendent form an advisory board of four physicians — an infectious disease medicine specialist, an epidemiologist, a pediatrician and a mental health professional — to help guide the district's actions.

Again in hindsight, he said, the district should have allowed elementary school students to attend school five days a week, in either a morning or afternoon session.

"We need to get all of our kids back into their classrooms ASAP," Collins said in the questionnaire. "The Harvard School of Public Health has determined that 3 feet of social distancing is safe for kids, ESPECIALLY for kids wearing masks! Our students also rely on their extracurricular activities for their social and emotional well-being. We need to get them back on our sports fields and into their extracurricular activities ASAP!"

One of the hurdles for more in-person learning has been the teachers union, the Elmhurst Teachers Council. It has argued for less in-person learning for the safety of everyone involved.

The union challenged the district's decision late last year to reopen schools starting Jan. 11. It asked the state educational labor board to require the district to hold off on in-person learning, but the board rejected the request. The union is virtually alone statewide in making such a request to the state board.

In making its case to the state board, the union said the district failed to meet its own criteria in reopening. However, the district contended the union failed to consider the interests of students in its request.

Besides Collins, the other candidates did not take a position one way or another in Patch's January questionnaire on how the district has handled reopening.

"There are certainly lessons to be learned from the past year, but I'd like to be future-facing and proactive in making progress to more in-person learning," Schrementi said in her response. "I believe the district should start by bringing back more of the youngest learners in person as we become able to loosen current mitigations. The district also needs to be open to creative solutions for getting Bryan and Sandburg students on a two-day a week schedule instead of the current ABC schedule, which means some weeks the students are only in the building one day."

Caforio said in-person instruction was, by far, the best instructional model.

"Following the available science, data and health guidance, I voted under intense criticism this summer to open schools for both remote & in person/hybrid learning with safety measures in place. While the hybrid model serves as a 'step' towards full in-person instruction as the situation allows, I am sensitive to the fact this is a particularly challenging model for both our students and teachers," Caforio said.

Snyder said he supported the mask requirement, but not mandatory testing, which has since begun.

"I want students to get back to school, in-person full time, as soon as it is reasonable and safe to do so," he said.

Gall said in-person learning should be flexible and up to the family's discretion.

"Appropriate screening, social distancing, face masks, temperature checks and contact tracing all need to be in place in order to monitor exposure and to quarantine as needed. Staff health concerns need to be addressed and accommodated on a case-by-case basis," she said. "Mask mandate, yes. Testing could be optional, but if symptomatic, students and staff should be sent home."

Arvanitis explained what her goal was.

"I believe the optimal learning environment for students is to be in class with their peers and teachers. I am a strong supporter of maximizing the number of minutes and days our children are in-person learning each week while maintaining a robust remote learning environment for students who learn from home," Arvanitis said. "My goal is to work quickly toward fully and safely reopening our schools. Recent studies have provided ample information supporting the opening of schools and their ability to implement safeguards that limit transmission."