Proviso Together candidates Samuel Valtierrez, Arbdella Patterson, Rodney Alexander and Amanda Grant pose at a campaign event. (Photo courtesy of 209 Together Facebook page)

Three outspent, grass-root campaigns run by neophyte candidates ousted incumbents in surprise Cook County school board upsets in the consolidated elections held April 4.

“This is a movement and it’s not going to stop here,” said Rodney Alexander of Bellwood, who won a seat on the Proviso Township High School District 209 board with a four-candidate slate called Proviso Together.

Communicating with social media, groups of parents and volunteers won contested races that sprang up in Proviso, as well as two elementary districts, Lyons D103 and Bellwood D88.

In Lyons, a slate of three incumbents backed by Mayor Christopher Getty were ousted by a former board president, the former district administrative assistant and a second-grade teacher. A self-financed campaign of about 50 volunteers encouraged each other on Facebook, and knocked on doors in neighboring district feeder towns of McCook, Forest View, Stickney and Brookfield, where the Lyons village influence was weaker.

It didn’t help that incumbent candidates declined to participate in a PTO candidate forum or send statements to the local newspaper. Katie Broderick, Olivia Quintero and Kendra Pierce did not win re-election.

This echoed the election in 2015, where the mayor financed a group of silent candidates from his campaign committee and took control of the board. Over two years, the district booted the school attorneys and hired the village law firm. Parents complained when teachers and administrators fled the district and new high-paying administrative positions were created and staffed with politically connected campaign contributors.

Lyons District 103 school board winners (from left) Sharon Anderson, Marge Hubacek and Shannon Johnson (Photo courtesy of Shannon Johnson)

“[The district’s politically connected hires] are not meeting the needs of the kids,” said candidate Shannon Johnson at the forum. “They are meeting the needs of a politically hungry man who’s trying to advance his career through our school district at the cost of our children and our tax dollars.”

When election results came in, Johnson yelled, “District 103 is safe!”

“I’m proud of the campaign we ran,” wrote Marge Hubacek of Forest View to supporters. “We relied on the truth and our amazing parents!! They helped reach out to the community and in the end our kids will benefit. We have a lot of work ahead but we are up for it. Surrounded by all the support we have I know we will be successful,” she wrote.

Even a former superintendent weighed in.

“I can’t tell you how the news of this election buoyed my spirits,” wrote Mike Warner, who left the district five years ago. “After watching the worst kind of self-serving and anti-individual-rights politics for the past few months, it is refreshing to find out that people still care enough about their schools to vote for those who care about children.”

In Bellwood District 88, three-of-four newbie “Bellwood Dream Team” candidates won board seats in the troubled district. Dorothy C. Smith, Deborah L. Giles and Maria D. Perez won. Incumbent board President Marilyn A. Thurman also won re-election. Smith and Giles also won races for trustees on the Bellwood Public Library board.

Bellwood public school’s administration “may very well be the most brazenly corrupt local government in Proviso Township, if not the entire state,” wrote local online newspaper editor Michael Romain in the Village Free Press in a pre-election op-ed.

The district has made headlines for nepotistic hiring and excessive spending, which have been covered by the Chicago Tribune. Superintendent Rosemary Hendricks is on her third stint at D88, having been fired and rehired twice.

Deborah Giles started as a library volunteer and didn’t like how the new board members approved weeklong conference trips for themselves, without even reporting what they learned. Giles began to videotape library board meetings, and then was drawn to the school district, where a similar group of administrators, with some overlap, appeared to be running the district for their own personal gain.

Romain’s editorial praised Giles and the “watchdog citizenry of a small group of frustrated Bellwood taxpayers,” who ended up running for office.

“Over the last few years, [Giles and her colleagues] have pushed back in classic, grassroots fashion,” Romain wrote. “They created Facebook and YouTube pages, where they posted video of school district and library board meetings. They filed FOIA requests. They stood up to highly paid and well-protected bullies.

Watchdog-turned-candidate Deborah Giles in Bellwood D88 (Photo courtesy of Facebook.)

“They mastered the school board’s own bylaws, policies and state education laws (to such an extent that they’ve corrected the elected school board members on multiple occasions). They asked hard questions. They researched. They mapped out the patronage hires and the shady contracts, laying it all bare,” Romain wrote.

Dream Team candidate April Falco, along with incumbents Katie S. Ross and candidates Barbara Conner and Delphine Powell, did not win re-election.

In Proviso Township High School District 209, a group of volunteers pushed themselves to the limits to support Samuel Valtierrez of Melrose Park, Amanda Grant from Westchester and Arbdella “Della” Patterson from Maywood and Alexander from Bellwood on their path to victory.

“You can’t trust the people who’ve been there for 16 years and run the district into the ground,” said Valtierrez, an alumnus and parent of Proviso students, at a campaign event. “They just want to have power and don’t care about our kids.”

Grass roots coordinators said volunteers knocked on 2,000 doors in the enormous district, which covers 10 feeder towns and almost 30 square miles.

Board president Teresa D. McKelvy, along with longtime incumbents Brian Cross and Dan Adams of the Proviso First slate, were ousted from the board. The slate is supported by 7^th District State Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, whose wife ShawnTe Raines Welch ran unsuccessfully for D209 school board in 2015. Newcomer Jacqueline Walton also failed to win a seat.

The Proviso Together campaign’s momentum was inspired by the surprise 2015 grassroots win by Forest Parkers Claudia Medina and Ned Wagner and incumbent Theresa Kelly. The board will now consist of seven candidates from the “reform” slate, who pushed for the district’s new superintendent and Proviso East principal.

Again, communicating by Facebook, some local volunteers were inspired by the Women’s March on Washington and other protest events.

“Politics at the micro-local level is where it’s at,” said Anna Friedman, who helped the campaign with marketing videos. “I saw what Facebook targeting ads did for [President Donald] Trump in the presidential election and I thought, ‘I could do that too — for good.’”

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— Grass-roots campaigns rack up school board wins in Proviso, Bellwood and Lyons —