There are winners and then there are losers. For now, we are going to focus on the winners.
Congratulations to Karen O’Halloran for getting the highest number of votes in the Pleasantdale School Board Election and winning a seat on the board. Her passion and drive were unparallelled. We are confident she will carry our voice at board meetings where she will represent each and every member of our community.
Congratulations to Mark Mirabile. I had the pleasure of spending the day with Mark and his wife, Judy and was grateful that we got the chance to know one another better and to realize that we share many of the same views. They are good people and I look forward to continuing our work together on the communication team to serve the needs of our district.
Congratulations to Patti Essig and Leandra Sedlack. They will again be able to hand their children their diplomas when they walk across the stage at graduation this year. We trust that they will continue to serve the best interests of the entire community during the next four years.
There were many other winners, some even before the votes were tallied.
The teachers were winners. We hope that by sharing their “voices” with the community we were able to raise awareness to their plight. We had hoped that by winning we would be able to make some positive changes on their behalf. We can only hope that the awareness that was raised will lead to fairer practices and garner them the respect that they deserve.
The community won as well. This blog was started so that everyone’s voice would be heard. Our stats outpaced themselves almost on a daily basis. It was evident to us and to others that this was one way for residents to communicate whether it was openly or anonymously.
We hope that by bringing to light many of the concerns of the community, our superintendent Mark Fredisdorf, will take notice that smoke and mirrors will not make problems, concerns, complaints and parents just go away. When the dust settles, they will always remain. We hope that he will set aside his monopoly on our school district and work together with the community in making our schools the very best they can be. We will remain ever vigilant to the needs all district residents, especially the children.
We plan to keep our blog open because we feel this is one avenue of communication that will continue to grow. Not every blog on the Internet is what you’d like it to be. Some are politically correct so as not to rock the boat, and others seek to bring truth to light. Our intention is and will remain to shed light on the wrongs and the rights, the good and the bad, and unfortunately, even sometimes the ugly.
Please click on the link to the right to subscribe to our blog. If you would like to contribute a column to the main page, please send us an email to pleasantdaleblog@gmail.com.
Finally, in true Chicago form, we say, see ya next election…it’s only 730 days away and there is much more work to be done!
Candidates: votes
Karen O'Halloran: 690 votes
Mark Mirabile: 659 votes
Patti Essig: 658 votes
Leandra Sedlack: 651 votes
Gina Scaletta-Nelson: 619 votes
Lauri Valentin: 573 votes
Michael Rak: 562 votes
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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4 comments:
I want to say thank you to the four of you for making the whole community aware that the current school board is not doing there job the way they should be. I hope that this awareness will increase the amount of people involved at school board meetings. I can personally say that I will be at every one from now on to make sure that they all know how I feel! Congrats to Karen, I am hopeful that you will be able to continue pushing the message that all of youhave put out there!
Julie Ryan
Congratulations Karen! I hope Gina, Mike and Lauri will be joining you in two years! Thanks for keeping the blog open.
Congrats to everyone! If you 3 wish to run again just make yourself visible. You don't always have to make a lot of noise to have yourself noticed. Make sure everyone knows you are watching. Try to understand what might be happening behind the scenes. Don't be discouraged if people still don't show up at meetings. It's always been this way in this community. Even tho we do have a lot of involved parents, it's always those same parents doing everything (PTA, Little League, Scouts, coaching Park District teams, etc.). There is a lot of apathy around and there has been for years.
You guys ran a very close race. Only a couple of percentage points separated all of the candidates.
Karen, are you ready? You'll be the wave maker. I know you will, girl.
The prerequisite to understanding this letter is to have encountered some of Dr. Mark Fredisdorf's capilotades and to have realized how harebrained they are. As is customary for a letter of this sort, I will now offer up paper and ink anent the phylogeny of Fredisdorf's unambitious, froward attitudes in order to make the point that Fredisdorf pretends to have the solution for everything. In reality, he creates more problems for the rest to solve. Consider, for example, how Fredisdorf's scribblings began innocently enough with peaceful calls for change. Unfortunately, his crime syndicate has since morphed into the prime backer of an insurgency, replete with pharisaical demands for fostering suspicion—if not hatred—of "outsiders".
There are some simple truths in this world. First, the word on the street is that Fredisdorf's unholy ballyhoos simply don't stand up to the litmus test of logic. Second, mayhem, and insanity are the inevitable consequences of Fredisdorf's indiscretions. And finally, I am more than merely surprised by Fredisdorf's willingness to replace Robert's Rules of Order with "facilitated consensus building" at all important meetings. I'm shocked, shocked! And, as if that weren't enough, Fredisdorf is capable of only two things, namely whining and underhanded tricks.
The core of this seemingly insoluble problem is the fact that Fredisdorf recognizes annoying, oleaginous sharks as fellow peers, as cousins-german, and as brothers. If you doubt this, just ask around. There isn't so much as a molecule of evidence that he has mystical powers of divination and prophecy. The only reason that Fredisdorf claims otherwise is that if he truly wanted to be helpful, Fredisdorf wouldn't dam the flow of effective communication. After reading everything I am forced to conclude that Fredisdorf has been deluding people into believing that the few who complain regularly about his metanarratives are simply spoiling the party. Don't let him delude you, too. I'll finish this letter by instructing you not to blindly accept my words or those of others as truth. Investigate, discriminate, and question everything not proven. Only by doing so can you determine for yourself that Dr. Mark Fredisdorf's satellites will have to stop shouting "Me, me!" and learn to harmonize on "Us, us!".
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