The top school issues in DuPage County during 1998 rarely were settled in the classroom.
Instead, the significant battles were fought in boardrooms, on picket lines and in the ballot booths.
Personnel issues dominated, and perhaps the most important of them dealt with the still unresolved dispute between Naperville School Supt. Donald Weber and his school board.
Weber and the Naperville Unit School District 203 board jousted for weeks over terms of a new contract, and he lost. The academic status of the district–one of Illinois’ premier school systems–was never in question.
But clashes developed between the superintendent and four of the district’s seven board members. As a result, the board majority packaged a new two-year contract in a way that Weber said was tantamount to firing him. He will stay on the payroll until June 30, 2000, but he can be reassigned from superintendent to another administrative job at the board’s pleasure.
At year’s end, the sharply divided board still could not agree on how, or even whether, to proceed in seeking Weber’s successor.
Earlier in the year, Wheaton Warrenville Unit School District 200 Supt. E. James Travis stepped down to return to the classroom as a Wheaton North High School mathematics teacher. One of his goals, which he did not achieve, was to get a 1997 bond issue passed. He and the school board cut a deal to ease his transition from an annual salary of $134,934 to $72,391 in two years.
In explaining his removal, Travis said that sometimes a school board and superintendent “don’t have a good fit.”
That also can be true of school boards and teachers. The usually smooth opening of DuPage schools, for example, was marred by a five-day teachers’ strike in Glenbard High School District 87.
When the walkout began, the board was offering a three-year contract with a 4 percent salary raise the first year, 3 percent the second and 3 percent the third in base pay. It was settled with a 5 percent pay boost the first, 4 percent the second and 4 percent the third. Because of the way the salary schedule is structured, some teachers will receive increases topping 25 percent over the three years. And 215 of 525 teachers at the top of the wage scale will be paid $85,675 in the third year of the contract for 36 weeks of work.
And there can be significant differences between school boards and residents, as an ongoing battle in Clarendon Hills indicates. Residents there are still trying to block construction of a middle school with the oft-heard suburban cry of “NIMBY”–`not in my back yard.”
For six years, Hinsdale Elementary School District 181, which includes Clarendon Hills, has been searching for a solution to its overcrowding problem for 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Finally, voters approved a bond issue to finance a second District 181 middle school in Clarendon Hills’ Prospect Park. Nearby residents have tried to find ways to stop the school. The latest effort is a DuPage County lawsuit charging the building violates zoning laws.
Another successful referendum proposal came in Downers Grove High School District 99, where voters approved a $49.5 million bond issue to alleviate a space crunch. Additions will be built at Downers Grove North and South High Schools. In 1997, residents trashed a proposal for a $75 million bond issue that would have included a third high school in Woodridge. The school board scaled down the proposal and floated the plan as a trial balloon at community forums before putting it on the ballot. The revised strategy succeeded.
“The fat lady has sung,” declared Stanley Urban, co-chairman of a citizens referendum committee, after votes were tabulated.
But in Wheaton Warrenville Unit School District 200, officials were left muttering when voters narrowly defeated a second attempt for a construction bond issue.
Citizens rejected a $67 million construction plan for two high school additions, a replacement building for 114-year-old Longfellow Elementary School and upgrading facilities at 10 other schools.
