Board President Message
February 23, 2017
As we look forward to the start of spring, I’d like to bring you up to date on some recent developments with your Board of Education.
We will be holding our next community forum on Monday, March 6th. The topic will be the proposed changes to the daily class schedule at Lincoln Middle School starting next fall. For many years it has been the board’s desire to increase the time that Lincoln students receive math instruction each day. In order to accomplish this, the students’ schedule will undergo a substantial change. Both staff and students will have to adjust to these changes and we want the parent community to have a thorough understanding of the new schedule so that you can be supportive of the transition. The March 6th forum will be held in the Lincoln LRC at 7pm.
In recent months a number of parents have requested that they be given easier access to documents that the board discusses at its regular meetings. In the past, the district has posted many documents such as contracts, calendars, budgets, etc. on the website. Additional documents could be obtained by requesting them from administration. In a recent discussion board members expressed the desire to be as transparent as possible so we decided to post the complete board packet after every meeting. Only confidential documents pertaining to such things as personnel and student privacy will be excluded from the public packets which can be found under “Board Agendas” on the district website. We hope that this change will provide easier access to documents once the board has discussed them in an open meeting.
Finally, I’m happy to be able to tell you that we have six candidates who have come forward to run for the four Board of Education seats that will be up for election on April 4th. Current members Eileen Kowalczyk and Gerry McCluskey will be running for a second term. In addition Vicki Chung, John Dyer, Brian Maye and Gwynne Ryan have filed paperwork to be on the ballot. If you see these individuals be sure to express your appreciation to them for their willingness to make this important commitment to our district. I strongly encourage ALL district parents to be sure you are registered to vote so that you can participate in the election.
Current board members Karen Nejdl and Joe Leane will be concluding their service to the district in May when the new board is sworn in. Karen is finishing her 2nd term (8 years) and Joe is concluding 14 years of service. The residents of District 57 owe these two a huge debt of gratitude for their extraordinary commitment to public education in our community!
I hope to see many of you at the Community Forum on March 6th and I wish you all a pleasant spring.
Sincerely,
Joe Sonnefeldt
President, D57 Board of Education
Posted: Thursday, February 23, 2017