As political candidates, authoritarians typically exploit fear, in their hunt for enough votes to impose punitive controls. Take, for example, the bloc candidacy of Nathan Mellman and Joshua Gertz for the District 200 high school board. Their website emphasizes three priorities: harsher student discipline, an academic caste system for freshman (not currently tracked in certain classes) and DOGE-like scrutiny of projects and staffing. Translation: be afraid of the bad kids, the slow kids, the tax-and-spend liberals. Empower us to expel the woke ideology that slackened our standards.
Will Oak Park and River Forest vote in fear? In the Feb. 5 Wednesday Journal, OPRF’s spokesperson rebuts Mellman and Gertz’s mischaracterization of data demonstrating that, even with COVID, academic performance has been essentially steady, while combative incidents declined in 2023-24.
Expulsions and “tough-guy” discipline are counter-productive. OPRF educates adolescents, many only 14 years old, who shouldn’t be exiled from the learning, counseling and credentialing that will shape their adulthood.
Meanwhile, a freshman tracking system would create winners and losers. A progressive community can’t ignore the impact on minority and low-income children consigned to low tracks. In contrast, when de-tracked students experience team-based and project-based learning, instead of classroom lectures, the added value of diverse backgrounds and skills benefits everyone.
Mellman and Gertz also vow to safeguard taxpayer money. What candidate doesn’t? Yet unable to identify any improper spending, their website decries teacher absences — during 2022! — when the feds didn’t terminate pandemic emergency measures until May 2023. If there’s actual misspending, prove it, or dampen the fear-inducing subtext against a school that sustains our home values.
Can fear be outvoted here? With only five ballot candidates for four seats, half of this slate will win automatically — unless write-in candidate and UIC professor David Schaafsma gets sufficient support. Regrettably, as the Feb. 19 Wednesday Journal reported [Chronically low, voter turnout concerns candidates, News] only about 18% of voters turned out for our 2023 local election.
Vote against fear. Or vote in fear — of punitive and divisive leadership at OPRF High School.
David Gilbert
Oak Park