U46 hopefuls encourage both parents and students

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

ELGIN – For Maria Bidelman of Elgin, the process was simple. She was at a neighborhood function when several people came up to her and told her they thought she should run for the School District U46 Board of Education, she said.

That’s how the school social worker, now finishing up her first term on the school board, said she was identified and encouraged to get involved in the Elgin school district.

“A little encouragement goes a long way,” Bidelman said. “It did for me.”

The idea of a little encouragement was one that was sounded repeatedly at a candidates forum for the upcoming school board elections Thursday night in the library at Elgin High School. That included encouraging parents to get involved, as well as students to set their expectations higher.

All six candidates vying for the four open seats on the school board up for grabs in the April 5 elections appeared at the forum, hosted by the U46 Citizens Advisory Committee’s legislative committee.

Candidates include incumbents Bidelman and Amy Kerber, also of Elgin. Mary Akemann VanSlyck, Traci O’Neal Ellis, Gary Percy and Jennifer Shroder, all of Elgin, also are running.

Shroder’s name, U46 pointed out Friday, has accidentally been misspelled “Schroder” on the election ballot.

Parental involvement can be defined in many ways, Bidelman said: helping out with fundraisers, helping out with field trips, helping out in the classroom. And to define it in one way would leave out a lot of parents, she added.

But, she said, “I think the most important is being home when your kids come home and giving them their direction, what education means to you and the importance of education in your home.”

That answer came in response to a question from the audience, asking candidates to define parental involvement and give examples of how to increase parental involvement and what to do if parents don’t get involved.

“My parents were told when I was in kindergarten that I refused to color inside the lines. Not that I couldn’t, but I refused. I still struggle with that,” said Ellis, an attorney and business owner whose parents, Ron and Carolyn O’Neal, were longtime educators in U46.

Getting parents involved might mean coloring outside the lines and thinking outside getting parents inside a school building, she said. It might mean the board members have to go to parents, she added.

VanSlyck said one of the most important things parents could do was have high expectations of their children.

The six candidates agreed students weren’t being held accountable enough for their own education and that not enough was being expected of them.

That’s one thing VanSlyck, a career specialist at Bartlett High School, said she’s learned from her involvement with Elgin Community College’s Alliance for College Readiness: 60 percent of students entering ECC need remedial help in math, and about 26 percent in English, she said.

“We are failing these students, many of whom didn’t know they weren’t ready until too late,” she said.

Students aren’t given enough credit for what they can learn and will rise to expectations, Bidelman said, answering what students should expect from a U46 education. They need “rigor, relevance and consistency,” she said.

Percy, who works for American Airlines and vice-chairs the U46 Citizens Advisory Committee, added knowledge about liberal arts, finances and technology to the current board member’s list.

“That education should be well-rounded — not just the three R’s,” he said.

Shroder advocated parental involvement in response to several questions. The freelance editor and substitute teacher answered that talking to parents and finding out what they need is more important than lobbying legislators. It is a way to push a rigorous, progressive education without spending money and to identify future board members, she said.

“The most important job is listening to you guys, knowing what you need,” Shroder said. “That would be the way I would form my priorities.”

It’s tough to come up with a decision the current school board has made that she would have handled differently because she thinks so much of what the board does is behind closed doors she said. She did say the high — and highly criticized — salary awarded to former U46 superintendent Connie Neale jumped out at her, to applause from the audience.

Other candidates declined to second-guess specific board decisions.

Kerber said as an incumbent, she took that question to be whether she had regrets about decisions she has made in the past four years. The decision to lay off more than 700 teachers last year was one that “still sits with me,” the medical records worker said.

“There are many decisions I would have preferred not to have made,” Kerber said.

“It’s seven people who oftentimes bave to make the least bad decision so those seven people can sleep at night.”