Oak Park and River Forest High School officials named Attila Weninger as the new superintendent last week, capping a seven-month search process.
Despite the half-dozen or so candidates considered before Weninger, school board President Barry Greenwald said Weninger was never second-best.
“I can honestly say it was a tie for first place” in the second round of finalists, Greenwald said. The board dismissed the first group of three finalists it interviewed publicly in December.
Weninger is the director of human resources at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange. He served as the school’s director of curriculum and instruction from 1996-2004, as the principal of Wheaton North High School from 1992-96, and as an English teacher, coach and assistant principal before that.
“He’s been involved in every aspect of education that he will be in charge of supervising,” Greenwald said. “He’s a talented guy with a long history of achievement.”
The board is expected to approve Weninger’s hiring at its April 26 meeting; the contract is being finalized now, Greenwald said.
“I am honored to have been selected,” Weninger said, adding that he’s looking forward to the new challenges and the “positives of beginning a new era” at OPRF.
Why did it take so long to name Weninger after the board’s first choice withdrew from consideration one month ago? That’s just how long it takes, Greenwald said, with a site visit, board discussions and a week’s delay during spring break.
“I don’t think we dragged our feet on any piece of this,” he said, adding that he feels the board moved with “incredible rapidity” and an open fashion in making its selection.
Shortly after the board’s choice was announced last Friday to staff and faculty, one parent group alleged the timing of the hiring was politically motivated, coming just days before the election. Greenwald and Yasmin Ranney, board vice president, are up for re-election.
“Barry Greenwald should be ashamed of himself for this unethical last-minute power grab,” said Wyanetta Johnson, co-president of African-American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education (APPLE). “This shows the incumbent board members are desperate for re-election.”
Greenwald said an agreement with Weninger came on Wednesday or Thursday of last week, and he wanted the school’s faculty to know about the board’s choice. On Friday, he got a call from a reporter and directed the school’s spokeswoman to e-mail a release to all media outlets on Saturday.
He said he could do nothing to change the minds of those who suspect the move was politically motivated.
Greenwald hoped that any effect the election might have on Weninger’s confirmation would be an “interesting but not relevant” question, however Greenwald and Ranney were not re-elected Tuesday.
Greenwald said he is aware the choice will make some people in the community unhappy because Weninger’s experience in dealing with the minority student achievement gap might be less than some had hoped to see in a new superintendent. But he reaffirmed Tuesday night that he had no regrets on the choice.
“School board members had promised to hire a candidate with experience in … reducing the school’s racial achievement gap…,” the APPLE statement reads in part. “Reducing the achievement gap has been one of the board’s announced main goals for the 2006-07 school year.”
“Yet information furnished by the board on Weninger’s background reflects that Weninger has virtually no prior experience in these areas,” Johnson said.
“I think we came as close to that goal as we could,” Greenwald said. “I don’t think we’ve broken our promise.”
Weninger said the achievement gap is a complicated problem with many components, but that he would like to look at “school readiness,” or improving the learning environments at home and in the classroom.
He said that common sense tells him that having more teachers of color gives minority students role models. Lyons Township, with the help of a Recruit Illinois grant, has been able to meet its 10 percent minority student population with a 10 percent minority teacher population.
“Ten years ago that wasn’t the case,” Weninger said.
He said it is unfortunate that APPLE has become critical of him before meeting him. “I would hope I would have the opportunity to meet with APPLE and they would open their hearts and minds to get to know me, as I intend to do with them,” he said.
A pending federal lawsuit from a former Lyons Township administrator charging the school’s board and administration with sex- and age-based discrimination and retaliation did not slow down the selection process, Greenwald said.
“That seems to come with the territory. Dr. Weninger made us aware of this,” he said.
Weninger earned a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Michigan State University, and a master’s degree in English and a Ph.D. in social policy from Northwestern University.
He grew up in Cleveland, and later Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a very diverse community, he said.
For 10 years Weninger lived in Oak Park, raising three children and, along with a neighbor, pitching an idea for alley associations much like block associations.
“My heart was in Oak Park,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten that.”