Township High School District 211 elections (2017)

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2019 → ← 2015
Township High School District 211 Elections
General election date
April 4, 2017
Enrollment (14-15)
12,183 students

Three seats on the Township High School District 211 school board were up for general election on April 4, 2017. Board incumbents Robert LeFevre and Anna Klimkowicz filed for re-election to their seats on the board. They were joined on the ballot by challengers Jean Forrest, Katherine David, Ralph Bonatz, and Edward Yung. LeFevre and Klimkowicz won re-election to their seats, and Yung won the other seat on the ballot. Forrest, David, and Bonatz ran together as a candidate slate.

Candidates in this race participated in a candidate forum on March 18, 2017. Click here to watch a video of the forum. LeFevre, Forrest, and David participated in Ballotpedia's 2017 survey of school board candidates. Click here to read their responses.

Elections

Voter and candidate information

The Township High School District 211 Board of Education consists of seven members elected at large to four-year terms on a staggered basis every odd-numbered year. A general election was held on April 4, 2017. There were three seats up for election.

To get on the ballot, school board candidates had to file a notarized statement of candidacy and notarized nominating petitions with the Cook County Clerk's Office during the filing period. The filing period began December 12, 2016, and ended December 19, 2016. Candidates could also file an optional loyalty oath at that time. A statement of economic interests also had to be filed by December 19, 2016. The nominating petitions had to include the signatures of 25 voters residing in the school district and could not be circulated until September 20, 2016.

At-large

Results

Township High School District 211, At-Large General Election, 4-year terms, 2017
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Anna Klimkowicz Incumbent	20.16%	10,093
Robert LeFevre Incumbent	17.66%	8,843
Edward Yung	16.51%	8,267
Katherine David	16.07%	8,045
Ralph Bonatz	14.80%	7,412
Jean Forrest	14.66%	7,340
Write-in votes	0.15%	73
Total Votes		50,073
Source: Cook County Clerk, "Consolidated Election April 4, 2017 Summary Report," accessed April 19, 2017

Candidates

Anna Klimkowicz		Robert LeFevre		Ralph Bonatz
	Incumbent Member, 1997-2017		Incumbent Member, 2005-2017		Member of candidate slate with Jean Forrest and Katherine David
Katherine David		Jean Forrest		Edward Yung
	Member of candidate slate with Jean Forrest and Ralph Bonatz		Member of candidate slate with Katherine David and Ralph Bonatz		Former member, 2009-2013

Additional elections on the ballot

See also: Illinois elections, 2017

The Township High School District 211 Board of Education election was the only election on the ballot for voters that reside in the school district boundaries.

Key deadlines

The following dates were key deadlines for Illinois school board elections in 2017:

Deadline	Event
December 19, 2016	Candidate filing deadline
February 27, 2017	Initial campaign finance deadline
March 7, 2017	Last day to register to vote by paper application
March 19, 2017	Last day to register to vote by online application
April 3, 2017	Final election campaign finance deadline
April 4, 2017	Election Day

Endorsements

The Daily Herald, the Equality Illinois PAC, the Northwest Suburban Teacher's Union Local 1211, and the organization Progress for D15 and D211 endorsed incumbents Anna Klimkowicz and Robert LeFevre and challenger Edward Yung. Illinois Family Action and the group D211 Parents for Privacy endorsed challengers Ralph Bonatz, Katherine David, and Jean Forrest.

Do you know of an official or organization that endorsed a candidate in this race? Let Ballotpedia know by email at editor@ballotpedia.org.

Campaign finance

See also: List of school board campaign finance deadlines in 2017

School board candidates in Illinois were required to file campaign finance reports if they did one or both of the following:

• Accepted contributions or made disbursements in an aggregate amount of more than $5,000 during the calendar year
• Accepted contributions or made disbursements in an aggregate amount of more than $5,000 during the calendar year for communication via television, radio, or internet in support of or in opposition to a candidate, political party, or public policy

The first campaign finance deadline was February 27, 2017, and the second campaign finance deadline was April 3, 2017.

Reports

Candidates received a total of $9,364.00 and spent a total of $77.33 in the election, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Candidate	Contributions	Expenditures	Cash on hand
Anna Klimkowicz	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Robert LeFevre	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Ralph Bonatz, Katherine David, and Jean Forrest (candidate slate)	$9,364.00	$77.33	$9,286.67
Edward Yung	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00

Past elections

Information about earlier elections can be found by clicking [show] at the right.

2015 Township High School District 211, At-Large General Election, 4-year term, 2015 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Mucia A. Burke Incumbent 16.3% 6,890      Nonpartisan Lauanna Recker 14.6% 6,168      Nonpartisan Peter R. Dombrowski 14.4% 6,089      Nonpartisan Will Hinshaw 13.1% 5,569      Nonpartisan Richard Gerber Incumbent 12.7% 5,375      Nonpartisan Edward M. Yung 12% 5,075      Nonpartisan Robert D. Lithgow 11.3% 4,775      Nonpartisan Roman G. Golash 5.8% 2,443 Total Votes 42,384 Source: Cook County Clerk, "Election Results: April 07, 2015 Consolidated General Election," accessed April 22, 2015 2013 Township High School District 211, At-Large General Election, 4-year term, 2013 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan Anna Klimkowicz Incumbent 25.1% 7,060      Nonpartisan Mike Scharringhausen 23.6% 6,642      Nonpartisan Robert LeFevre Incumbent 19% 5,352      Nonpartisan Edward Yung Incumbent 17% 4,790      Nonpartisan Roman G. Golash 15.2% 4,265 Total Votes 28,109 Source: Cook County Clerk, "Suburban Cook County Election Results: April 09, 2013 Consolidated General Election," accessed March 16, 2015 2011 Township High School District 211, At-Large General Election, 4-year term, 2011 Party Candidate Vote % Votes      Nonpartisan George P. Brandt Incumbent 17.3% 9,436      Nonpartisan Richard Gerber Incumbent 16.9% 9,212      Nonpartisan Bill Robertson 16.5% 8,985      Nonpartisan Mucia A. Burke 14% 7,635      Nonpartisan Charles Fritz 12.4% 6,731      Nonpartisan M. Bryan Neal 11.8% 6,438      Nonpartisan Roman G. Golash 11% 5,973 Total Votes 54,410 Source: Cook County Clerk, "Suburban Cook County Election Results: April 05, 2011 Consolidated General Election," accessed March 16, 2015

What was at stake?

2017

Issues in the election

Candidate forum

The candidates in this race participated in a candidate forum on March 18, 2017. It was hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Palatine Area. A video of the forum can be found below.

Candidates debate bathroom access policy

See also: Transgender bathroom access laws in the United States

The six candidates who ran in the Township High School District 211 Board of Education election in 2017 fell into two camps on the issue of transgender student access to bathrooms and locker rooms. Incumbents Robert LeFevre and Anna Klimkowicz and former board member Edward Yung voiced supported of the district's policy to allow transgender students access to bathrooms of their gender identities. Challengers Jean Forrest, Katherine David, and Ralph Bonatz—who ran together as a slate in the election—said on their campaign website that they wanted to “replace the district’s practice of allowing locker room and restroom access to students of the opposite biological sex who are dealing with gender identity issues."

At the time of the election, the district did not have a written bathroom policy. Instead, it had a practice of allowing students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities, and it allowed a specific transgender student access to the girl's locker room due to a 2015 agreement with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education. Board members also approved a policy in a 5-2 vote in December 2015 that said the district would not discriminate based on a person's sex.

The organization Progress for D15 and D211, which endorsed Klimkowicz, LeFevre, and Yung, rallied in March 2017 in support of transgender student rights in the Township High School District 211 and the Community Consolidated School District 15.

The group Students and Parents for Privacy, which endorsed Forrest, David, and Bonatz in the election, filed a lawsuit in 2016 against the district and the U.S. Department of Education regarding the district's practice of allowing bathroom use based on gender identity. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which agreed to represent the privacy group's lawsuit, said sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with students of a different biological gender had caused "significant anxiety, stress, and embarrassment" for students and violated "their well-established right to privacy." Students and Parents for Privacy later removed the U.S. Department of Education from their lawsuit after guidelines set up by the Obama administration were repealed.

District 211 officials said the transgender student who had been given permission to use the girl's locker room did not have complete access. They said the student agreed to change in privacy stalls that the district added as part of the agreement with the OCR. Other students were also allowed to change in those stalls. The district asked the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois for help in defending the lawsuit. A federal judge ruled against Students and Parents for Privacy in October 2017. The judge said that students "do not have a constitutional right not to share restrooms or locker rooms with transgender students whose sex assigned at birth is different than theirs."

Candidate survey

Ballotpedia invites school board candidates to participate in its annual survey.
Click here to view or fill out the survey.

Survey responses

Three candidates in this race participated in Ballotpedia's 2017 survey of school board candidates. The following sections display the responses to the survey questions from incumbent Robert LeFevre and challengers Jean Forrest and Katherine David.

Hope to achieve

Robert LeFevre

When asked what he hoped to achieve if elected to the school board, LeFevre stated:

“	Continue to support outstanding educational opportunities for students.	”
—Robert LeFevre (March 22, 2017)

Jean Forrest

When asked what she hoped to achieve if elected to the school board, Forrest stated:

“	School board officials are entrusted with the stewardship of community resources to provide educational opportunities for all of our children. I value education highly. As a mother of two high school students, I want to make certain that our students take first priority when allocating funds. We have a great school district now, and I am passionate about taking our school district to the next level of excellence. At the same time, I am committed to respecting our neighbors’ tax dollars by using them efficiently and responsibly. I want to maximize the return on investment for taxpayers, making the very most of their hard-earned resources to serve our children.	”
—Jean Forrest (March 9, 2017)

Katherine David

When asked what she hoped to achieve if elected to the school board, David stated:

“	As a board member, I will continue to ensure that we are providing the highest standard of education for our high school students. I want all stakeholders to be represented at the school board level and would ensure board members’ participation in upcoming teacher and support-staff contract negotiations in 2018. I want the board to take the necessary steps to implement the best strategies for maximizing the two unused parcels of land located in Schaumburg, both from an economic standpoint and a community viewpoint. I want to encourage community members to be actively engaged in the decisions affecting our schools and to be their voice at the school board level.	”
—Katherine David (March 26, 2017)

Ranking the issues

The candidates were asked to rank the following issues by importance in the school district, with 1 being the most important and 7 being the least important. This table displays their rankings:

Issue importance ranking
Issue	LeFevre's ranking	Forrest's ranking	David's ranking
Expanding arts education	6	7	6
Improving relations with teachers	4	4	5
Balancing or maintaining the district's budget	2	1	1
Improving post-secondary readiness	1	2	3
Closing the achievement gap	3	3	2
Improving education for special needs students	5	5	4
Expanding school choice options	7	6	7

Positions on the issues

The candidates were asked to answer nine multiple choice and short answer questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. A link to their responses can be found below.

• Robert LeFevre's survey responses
• Jean Forrest's survey responses
• Katherine David's survey responses

About the district

See also: Township High School District 211, Illinois

Township High School District 211 is located in Cook County, Illinois.

Township High School District 211 is located in Cook County in northeastern Illinois. The county seat is Chicago. Cook County was home to 5,238,216 residents in 2015, according to the United States Census Bureau. The district was the 21st-largest school district in the state in the 2014-2015 school year and served 12,183 students.

Demographics

Cook County outperformed the rest of Illinois in terms of higher education achievement in the years 2011 to 2015. The United States Census Bureau found that 35.8 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree, compared to 32.3 percent of all state residents. The median household income for Cook County was $55,251, while it was $57,574 for the entire state. The poverty rate was 16.2 percent, compared to 13.6 percent statewide.

Racial Demographics, 2015
Race	Cook County (%)	Illinois (%)
White	65.7	77.3
Black or African American	24.2	14.7
American Indian and Alaska Native	0.8	0.6
Asian	7.4	5.5
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander	0.1	0.1
Two or more races	1.9	1.9
Hispanic or Latino	25.2	16.9

Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Township High School District 211 Illinois election. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Township High School District 211 elections (2017) - Google News

See also

Township High School District 211	Illinois	School Boards
Township High School District 211 elections (2015) List of school districts in Illinois	Illinois school board elections, 2017 Public education in Illinois Local ballot measures, Illinois	School board elections, 2017 School board elections, 2016 School board election data analysis, 2017 School board election data analysis, 2016

External links

• Township High School District 211
• Cook County Clerk