W E D N E S D A Y
September 21, 2016 Vol. 35, No. 5 ONE DOLLAR
JOURNAL of Oak Park and River Forest
@O @OakPark
Fall
September 2016
Food F
Fashion
&F Fun
Fall food
Special section, page 17
Oak Park needs schools’ OK for clean-up Trustees urge D97, D200 to let them amend TIF deal By TIMOTHY INKLEBARGER Staff Reporter
WILLIAM CAMARGO/Staff Photographer
WELCOME ANOMALY: District 97 Supt. Carol Kelley is among the 6 percent of public school administrators in the state who are minority and female. Her central office and building principals are also predominantly minority and/or female.
D97’s administration is a woman’s world No glass ceiling at Oak Park’s elementary school district
By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
According to 2015 Illinois State Board of Education data, more than three out of four Illinois public school teachers are women while roughly three out of four Illinois public school district superintendents are male. That disproportionality prompted the government watchdog group Better Government Association in a Sept. 3 re-
port to describe the roughly 878 superintendents in the state as “mostly a men’s club.” And for minorities, who comprise only 6 percent of those top district positions according to the BGA analysis, that club is even more select. Considering those numbers, Oak Park District 97 Superintendent Carol Kelley is a rarity wrapped in rarities. She’s not only in the small group of minority administrators who occupy superinten-
dent seats, but her central office team and building principals are predominantly female and/or minority. Since Kelley started on the job last July, nine people have been hired in her central office to replace employees who retired or resigned, plus one person hired to fill a newly created administrative position. All of them have been minority and/or women.
The Oak Park Board of Trustees was in for a rude awakening when construction crews began excavating two village-owned parking lots that will soon serve as the foundation of Oak Park’s next big mixeduse development. The apartment and retail building known as Elevate Oak Park is currently under construction near the corner of Lake and Harlem, but when workers began digging at the site earlier this year they discovered submerged leaking petroleum tanks that contaminated much of the development site. That pushed the environmental cleanup cost of the site up to $3 million, and now the village is hoping to use funds from the Downtown Tax Increment Finance District to cover the unexpected cost. The only catch is a legal settlement reached between the village and Oak Park’s two school boards in 2011 prevents the village from tapping the TIF funds without buy-in from the D200 and D97 school boards. Trustees urged school board members to consider approving use of the TIF funds. Oak Park Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb said he and other trustees have had an open dialogue with members of both school boards to persuade them to help the village invest in the downtown business district.
See WOMEN OF D97 on page 13
See DOWNTOWN TIF on page 14
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