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The Oak Park Elementary School District 97 Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve a number of cuts in personnel, including the elimination of three teachers at Hatch, Irving and Longfellow elementary schools.
In a 5-2 vote, the board approved the controversial resolution amid an outpouring of opposition from parents and teachers at the targeted schools.
The cuts are expected to shave $719,000 from the district’s Education Fund this year.
The no votes were from board members Peter Barber and Sharon Patchak-Layman. They opposed the resolution, arguing that the district look elsewhere for savings other than the classroom.
The district expects to save $126,000, according to its own budget estimates, from the teacher cuts.
Barber offered a motion to amend the resolution by readjusting the teacher cuts to reflect a loss of one teacher at Hatch, lowering the cost savings to $42,000. The motion failed, with no other board member agreeing to the motion.
More than a dozen parents and members from the Oak Park Teachers Association spoke in opposition to the teacher cuts during roughly 90 minutes of public comments.
Jim Gates and Angela Bolden, OPTA president and vice president, asked the board to postpone the vote until its March 22 meeting to allow the association to meet with members concerning fining alternatives to proposed teacher cuts.
Patchak-Layman offered a motion to delay the vote until that time, seconded by Barber. The motion failed in a 4-3 vote, with Dan Burke casting a yes vote.
Parents streamed out of Holmes Elementary School’s auditorium where the meeting was held, some in tears, following the vote.
CONTACT tdean@wjinc.com