Losing Lyons Township High Hopeful Did Well In 1 Area

LA GRANGE, IL – The unofficial election results were close last week for the candidates in the Lyons Township High School board election. And that was the case in most precincts around the school district.

The one major exception – the Pleasantdale area.

This was where residents in early 2023 loudly protested the school board's plan to sell the high school's Willow Springs land to an industrial developer.

Here's how the candidates finished: Christine Kozelka Campbell at 22 percent, Shawn Kennedy at 21 percent, Gioia Giannoti Frye at 20 percent, Elias Lopez at 19 percent and Arelene Cabana at 18 percent.

Four seats were up, so everyone won except Cabana.

But Cabana scored sizable leads in the precincts that make up Pleasantdale School District 107, which she formerly headed as the board's president.

In one precinct, Cabana got 38 percent. She exceeded 30 percent in several others.

In early 2023, it came to light that the high school board was secretly courting an industrial developer to buy the school's 70 acres next to houses and Pleasantdale Elementary School.

At the time, the Cabana-led board spoke out against such a sale, saying it was concerned with the effects of industrial development on the schoolchildren. In any case, the village had long banned such development in the area in question.

The school board held meetings behind closed doors for the better part of 2022 and early 2023 about the land. The attorney general later ruled that the board violated the state's open meetings law.