Three of the four candidates vying for a trio of open seats on the Niles Township High School District 219 school board introduced themselves to the public Tuesday at a candidates forum sponsored by the Niles North and Niles West High School Parent Advisory Councils.
Only Joe Nowik is a sitting member of the board and will be joined by newcomers Naema Abraham, Richard Evonitz and Virginia Camacho on the April 4 ballot. It was announced before the forum got under way that Camacho told organizers Tuesday she would not be appearing.
The three attending candidates answered questions gathered from different sources but posed by Niles West and Niles North High School students. All four candidates also answered written questions about themselves that came from Progress219, an organization that purports to evaluate for the community qualified and engaged candidates to serve on the school board.”
Naema Abraham
Abraham, 53, said she is a Niles North alumni who works in human resources. She said that her skills at her job would benefit School Dist. 219 including handling employment agreements, negotiating vendor contracts and designing and implementing employment relations policies and recruiting practices.
“Basically, I just feel we need a little more diversity at the board level,” she said in her opening comments. “I am an Assyrian myself, and unfortunately, people in my community don’t advocate as much as they should for their children, and I feel like having somebody with that same background on the board level will definitely add that perspective to decisions that are made by the board.”
Asked by Progress219 her three top priorities as a potential board member, Abraham listed diversity, fiscal integrity and equity. She said that diversity is both the district’s strength and weakness.
“It is challenging to serve a district that is so diverse,” she answered. “Programs need to be constantly reevaluated to ensure they are effective for all students, which is expensive.”
But she also said that student exposure to diversity is an upside that is “second to none.”
In other questioning at the forum, Abraham said she favors a school calendar that is mostly “religious-neutral” and she doesn’t see any major reason to make changes. She said she believes students should be “college ready” when they graduate, but also “life ready,” which would included more vocational education.
“College is not for everyone,” she said.
Abraham said she moved to Skokie in 1979 and spent a year at the now-defunct Niles East High School before she transferred to Niles North.
She closed by emphasizing her own immigrant experience.
“I hope to be able to be a voice for the immigrant population and the minorities,” she said. “We just don’t have the kind of support (we) should.”
Richard Evonitz
Richard Evonitz, 49, said he spent the last eight years as a member of the East Prairie School Dist. 73 board, most of them as board president.
Evonitz said the board he has overseen has addressed fiscal challenges from the recession, hired a new superintendent, adopted one of the first STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs in the area and created a plan that calls for building a new school, the subject of a successful referendum.
He said he is a lawyer who works in-house for a large property and casualty insurance company in downtown Chicago. Evonitz said he has lived in Skokie since 1998 and his daughter graduated from Niles North in 2016.
“I hope to, if elected, help foster a collegial and collaborative spirit among board members,” Evonitz said. He also said his role would be to support administration and staff in doing “vital work of educating and developing our children” and developing strategies regarding district funds.
Like other candidates, Evonitz named the district’s ethnic diversity as one of its greatest strengths and said “money is always an issue” when asked about challenges.
Education should not be “one size fits all,” he said, adding he supports more effort in making the curriculum suited for all demographics. He said he spoke out against the original Classroom First program in 2014 that called for NTHS School Dist. 219 to set aside funds for feeder schools in Skokie school districts 67 and 69.
The idea was to use those funds to build out STEM curriculum for students who would be entering School Dist. 219 in the future.
“As time has evolved, you’ve seen some of the benefits of Classroom First,” Evonitz said. “I think there are better ways to collaborate on curriculum.” In 2009, he said, East Prairie was able to build a STEM curriculum for much less money.
Joe Nowik
Joe Nowik, 56, said he was appointed to a school board seat in Dist. 219 two years ago, making him the only incumbent in the race. A Skokie resident of 31 years, Nowik said he is father of a child with a disability.
He said has had opportunity to work with many school administrators and teachers at Julia S. Molloy Education Center, in feeder districts and high school advocating for his son.
“This experience has given me a unique perspective on the working of…schools and the need to make sure our schools excel,” he said.
Nowik said he has served on the board of Have Dreams, a Chicago-area nonprofit serving children, teens and young adults impacted by autism, for seven years and served as board president for two.
He currently works as the director of operations of a manufacturing company on the North Side of Chicago, he said. Nowik maintained he is one of the few parents who have children in both School Dist. 219 schools.
Nowik received the only applause during the forum when he advocated for a curriculum focusing on more vocational education.
“One of the areas the board needs to focus on is to review its mission statement,” he said, adding that it is too “college focused.”
Asked to list his three top priorities as a board member, Nowik named long-range strategic planning for students that goes beyond “college ready”, negotiating a new contract with teachers using “interest- based bargaining” and being a proponent of “STEAM” instead of STEM, which adds “arts” to science, technology, engineering and math.
“I’m on the board to keep striving to make the environment more open and receptive to the students, parents, employees and constituents of District 219,” he said.
Virginia Camacho
Virginia Camacho, 47, did not appear at the forum, but she provided information to Progress219.
She said she is a two-year member of PLUS (Parent Leaders Uniting Schools) at Lincoln Junior High School.
“I work with other parents to organize events, bringing the multicultural community together and promoting participation with the school and community events,” she said. “My main focus is encouraging parents to take part in school-sponsored events for the benefit of their children.”
Camacho said she has a daughter who is currently a freshman at Niles West.
“Since I am a Hispanic woman, I would like to provide a voice for the Hispanic community within the school board,” she said. “I have the benefit of understanding and experiencing the challenges and obstacles that Hispanics encounter when it comes to education. I feel it is vital to represent that community.”
She listed as her top priorities as a potential school board member assisting in decreasing district-incurred debt, encouraging more participation from district families and introducing programs geared toward assisting students with finding a career path.
