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The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Six candidates vying for three U-46 board posts


By Seth Hancock
  The race for a spot on the School District U-46 Board of Education will be a contested one as six candidates, including three incumbents, have filed to run for three open four-year seats in the upcoming consolidated election on April 4.
  The three incumbents include Cody Holt and Veronica Noland, both of Elgin, and Donna Smith of Hanover Park, while the three challengers include Bartlett residents Melissa Owens and Tracy Smodilla and Elgin resident Enoch Essendrop.
  Smith, the board’s president, has been on the board since 2001 and Noland since 2013. Holt was elected to serve the remainder of a four-year term vacated by former board member Frank Napolitano in the 2015 election, and Holt was the highest vote getter of all 10 candidates vying for board seats.
  Although Holt was elected, along with two others, on a ticket for change and fiscal responsibility, the status quo of passing through the administration’s agenda has remained. There have been many split votes of 4-3 or 5-2, and both Noland and Smith have consistently voted with the majority.
  From the start of the current board, the majority has maintained a public posture of not wanting to work with the minority members on controversial issues as well as not wanting to hear opposing points of view.
  In only the second meeting of the current board, one of the minority members on the board sought access to closed session meeting recordings from the previous board but was denied, while Noland and Smith along with the majority even changed the board’s policy in order to deny their colleague’s civil rights to listen.
  Noland and Smith, along with the rest of the majority, continually denied all board member’s civil rights until the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill clarifying that board members across the state always had that right to listen.
  In October, Smith worked with a colleague in the majority on their own to limit public comments at board meetings if more than 20 speakers come to speak on a non-agenda item. At the same meeting, Noland made it clear she is not open to opposing views and said the only power the public has is to vote.
  “Come April, you can decide to reelect me or not, and that is where your power lies,” Noland said at the time.
  The change in public comments came after three straight meetings when members of the public came to speak in opposition to U-46 CEO Tony Sanders changing district practice behind closed doors with no public input to allow students to use the bathroom of their opposite biological sex if they identify as transgender.
  Noland, Smith and the majority stood behind Sanders’ decision and felt the public didn’t even have the right to know. The public would not have known about the change if not for a colleague on the board making it public via social media.
  Holt, on the other hand, felt the public should know and said: “That’s why I’m here to make sure that we do hold administration accountable for communication, and I think that they’ve learned from some of their mistakes and going forward we can communicate better.”
  Whether the administration has learned anything or not is up for debate as one member of the public received responses to questions as he told The Examiner the administration provided “responses in lieu of answers” as questions were not directly answered.
  The majority on the board said the change in public comments was needed because they don’t function well later at night, and when Holt questioned Smith on the timing of the change Smith said “why did I bring it out now, I don’t know.”
  Holt noted that there were lengthy public comments at previous board meetings in which most of the comments supported majority members, but Smith did not attempt to limit public comments until the majority of the public came out opposing the majority’s position. Although being on the board for over a decade, Smith said she only learned about her power to limit public comments now.
  Smith said those members of the public who may not speak because of the change can email her, and that she responds to emails. The Examiner has experienced the opposite as Smith, along with Noland and the rest of the majority, consistently refuse to answer questions from the press.
  Noland, while claiming she doesn’t “condone name calling” and “I don’t judge,” accused members of the public opposed to her of having a “flawed ideology” who are on the “fringe,” and she accused students who shared concerns at their school of being “inflammatory” and “sensationalizing.” While saying members of the public can’t use their religious values in decision-making, she said “I use my faith, personally from my experiences, to make my decisions.”
  Inconsistency has also been an issue for Noland when it comes to fiscal issues as she voted against the first two budgets during her term, when there was little doubt of their passage, but has voted for the last two budgets and tax levy increases without offering her reasoning. Smith has consistently voted for the U-46 budget and property tax levy increases while Holt has opposed both budgets and tax increases in his two year.
  Smith, as president, has allowed one of her colleagues in the majority to frequently levy personal attacks, interrupt speakers and publicly call a member of the minority a liar without any reprimand while she stopped the colleague accused of lying from being able to defend herself from the personal attack. Smith has also publicly reprimanded that minority colleague for simply expressing an opinion different from hers.
  On the challengers Essendrop was a member of the public who spoke in opposition to the district’s change in practice concerning bathroom/locker room access, Owens is the chairman of the U-46 Citizens’ Advisory Council and Smodilla chaired the NewYou46 group that endorsed Holt in the last election. NewYou46 also endorsed Phil Costello and Jeanette Ward, who won seats, as well as Ed Nowak.
  Ward has weighed into the race and has endorsed Essendrop, Holt and Smodilla.
  “If you would like to see property taxes frozen, transparency (instead of stifling of public comment), balanced non-indoctrinating curriculum, and privacy and safety for ALL students (not just those who demand access to bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex), then vote for these three on April 4, 2017,” Ward wrote in a statement.

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