LTHS Campaign Marked By Attack Mailers: 2023 Election

LA GRANGE, IL – School boards across the country have faced their share of controversies over the last few years.

Lyons Township High School's board is no exception.

In Tuesday's election, three of the seven board seats are available. Seven candidates are in the race.

The campaigns are not outwardly combining forces. But their supporters are.

In the last few weeks, flyers have reached mailboxes both endorsing and attacking groups of candidates.

The school's teachers union is supporting incumbents Kari Dillon and Jill Beda Daniels, along with newcomer Tim Albores.

Meanwhile, a new group, Support Our School, backs the three candidates and attacks another three — David Herndon, Tim Vlcek and Frank Evans.

In recent days, a mailer from an anonymous source is being sent to support Herndon, Vlcek and Evans. It also criticizes the two board members and Albores.

That leaves one other candidate – Justin Clark – who is not the subject of any mailer attacks. He appears to be the candidate in the middle, not allied with either group.

Tim Vlcek could be seen as the most conservative candidate. He has been criticized for attending a workshop for school board candidates by Awake Illinois, a group that opposes mask mandates and what it sees as liberally biased lessons about race, among other topics. He said he has never been an Awake member.

Vlcek has Facebook posts showing support for President Donald Trump, though not since 2020.

"The media tries to downplay the Trump rallies, but you can’t make this up, there are thousands of energized people here. God Bless America," Vlcek said in a post about attending a Trump rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020.

Board President Kari Dillon, who joined the board four years ago, is decidedly not in Trump's camp. In her own way, she could be seen as an election denier.

After Trump won in 2016, Dillon supported a petition that sought to overturn Trump's victory. It involved a scheme with the electoral college.

"Not going to accept four years of hate," she wrote on Facebook at the time.

In 2021 and 2022, board meetings became raucous affairs with public comments on masks, critical race theory, library books and LGBTQ issues.

At one meeting, a man accused board members of being "worse than pedophiles." At another, a woman read steamy passages from a library book, arguing the school's reading materials were obscene. Such speakers received audience applause.

By last summer, things had quieted down. Then came the plan to sell the school's 71 acres in Willow Springs.

In late November, the school board announced its interest in selling the property. But school officials had been talking behind the scenes with an industrial developer for eight months.

Willow Springs bars industrial uses on the land in question, but the school board secretly commissioned an appraisal as if the property were zoned for such proposes.

Last year, the board held six closed meetings about the land without citing the proper exception under the state's open meetings law. Through its lawyer, the board has since admitted to the violations. The attorney general is investigating.

The land is next to an elementary school, a park, a country club and a UPS facility. Willow Springs residents are opposed to industrial development of the land, airing their views at board meetings.

Willow Springs, four other towns, a park district and an elementary district have objected to the high school's plan.

In January, the school board's attorney said an industrial developer would have "other remedies" if Willow Springs rejected industrial development. He did not say what those remedies were.

In the campaign, Dillon and Daniels have supported the board's actions. To some degree or another, the other five candidates, including Albores, have questioned the plan to sell to an industrial developer.

Here are the questionnaires from the candidates:

• Tim Albores
• Justin Clark
• Jill Beda Daniels
• Kari Dillon
• Frank Evans
• David Herndon
• Tim Vlcek