Only 1 Elmhurst School Board Incumbent In Race So Far

ELMHURST, IL — Six candidates are in the running as of Thursday for three seats on the Elmhurst School District 205 board. Just one of them is an incumbent, board President Kara Caforio.

So far, the other two incumbents, Margaret Harrell and Jim Collins, have not put their names forward. If they plan to run, they have until Monday to submit their paperwork to the DuPage County Clerk's Office.

Besides Caforio, the other candidates are Leslie Stettin, Marie Gall, Athena Arvanitis, Nicole "Nikki" Slowinski and Laurel Schrementi.

Caforio was elected to the board in 2017. Previously, she was active in the local PTA and was a former teacher in Glendale Heights and Lake Zurich.

One of the candidates, Stettin, is associated with the "Reopen D205" Facebook page, which has more than 1,300 members and is pushing for in-person learning. She used the page to promote a protest in October outside the district's central office. Stettin's Twitter page describes her as "CEO to The Stettin Family and full time taxi driver to 3 kids who play travel sports."

Marie Gall works at Cicero Public School District 99 and is a former teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, according to her Facebook page.

Arvanitis is the assistant principal for student programs and operations for New Trier High School. The North Shore school serves about 4,000 students on two campuses, about half the enrollment of Elmhurst School District 205, which serves all grades.

New Trier is one of the wealthiest schools in the state. According to the Illinois Report Card website, 3 percent of New Trier's students come from low-income families, compared with 15 percent in Elmhurst.

Schrementi is a senior active learning designer with John Wiley and Sons in Oak Brook, where she has worked since 2014, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a former teacher in Indiana.

Slowinski is the director of leadership development for Advocate Aurora Health, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a former adjunct instructor at Elmhurst College.

In Illinois, school board members are unpaid. During the pandemic, school boards nationwide have found themselves caught in the crossfire between parents calling for in-person education and teachers unions favoring remote lessons.