Oak Park and River Forest High School provides astonishingly great — even transcendent — experiences to many of our students and families. OPRF can also be a frustrating, overwhelming, maddeningly difficult institution to navigate, one that sometimes fails in its mission to equitably educate every child.
My goal in serving on the board is to provide students and families more transcendence, and less frustration. To do that, we must focus on what our students need. As a member of the D200 board I will do my best to provide:
● Help in recovering from the trauma of the pandemic. We must address our student mental health crisis, providing the additional programs, tools, supports, and resources our students clearly need. We should also focus on social media use; implement a peer-to-peer mentoring program; and continue to promote a welcoming, positive culture.
● Rigor and access to excellence. Our students deserve a rigorous, best-in-class curriculum taught by excellent, experienced, creative, engaged teachers; they deserve true access to this curriculum for all students; and they deserve a faculty, staff, and administration that reflect the demographics of the student body.
● A safe, secure school conducive to learning. We must ensure all students are safe, and all students feel safe, by providing appropriate staffing, following school safety best practices, and continuing to rebuild student culture. We must enhance training in restorative practices, so all students can more effectively resolve differences and disputes.
● Welcoming facilities that enhance learning. We must continue to build learning spaces appropriate for 21st-century learning that serve student needs today and are flexible enough to adapt to learning styles in future decades. We must provide welcoming spaces and make them accessible to all students before, during, and after school.
● A better bridge to high school. We need more effective collaboration with District 97 and District 90, including a far more robust orientation for families; better communication and more detailed resources; earlier exposure for middle-school students to high-school role models; and special focus on a clearer on-ramp to special education services.
● More pathways out of high school. We should provide more students with more visible non-college options, including preparatory tracks aimed at acceptance to apprenticeship programs, and enhanced facilities for vocational training.
● What each student uniquely needs. Equity challenges us to see and provide each student with what he or she uniquely needs in order to succeed. Yet too often we fail to accurately see the unique strengths and needs of each child, and so we fall short in providing what that student needs. We must more effectively assess each student’s evolving needs so that we can better meet the challenge of equity.
Thank you for your interest in our community’s most important institution, our high school. With gratitude, I ask for your vote.
Tim Brandhorst is a candidate for the OPRF High School Board of Education.