Mokena's Front Porch
This is THE Mokena podcast, with a focus on history and community! A Chicago Suburb of 20,000+, Mokena started as a farming community that grew up after the Rock Island Train line was built through the middle of what would become downtown Mokena in 1852. Follow our website at MokenasFrontPorch.com or on social media!
Matt is a lifelong Mokenian and local historian with 2 books about Mokena as well as a Mokena history blog, Matt's Old Mokena. Many of our episodes are based on the Matt's work collecting the history of our Village.
Israel grew up learning history and real life stories from his WWII grandfathers. His family moved to Mokena in 2016 and live in one of Mokena's Downtown homes that was built in 1916. Getting to know Matt along with Mokena and it's history, Israel worked to make the podcast a reality, through technical challenges and being a first time podcaster. He is a BIG fan of Mokena!
Mokena's Front Porch
Mokena 159 Teachers Association Endorsement - Talking With The Teachers
This past week I went out to my mailbox and found an endorsement mailer from the Mokena Teachers Association, proclaiming their support for the four incumbent board members. So I reached out to a couple of the representatives from the Mokena Teachers Association and they were kind enough to meet with me at the Mokena Library.
I ask them about the endorsement session and why they made the choice they did. A lot of times we just get these fliers in our mailbox without understanding who is sending it and what went into making the decision. I hope this gives us all a better understanding of who the MTA is and how they made their choice this election.
My interviews with the Mokena 159 School Board Candidates who chose to speak with me will be coming out soon, along with the Lincolnway 210 School Board Candidates, mayoral, village trustee candidates and more to follow!
April 1st are the municipal elections! Be sure to vote!
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Photo & Artwork Credit: Jennifer Medema & Leslie V. Moore Jr.
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Heather and Megan. Thank you both for joining me today, both as representatives for the Mokena Teachers Association. Is that right? Yes, okay, and do you want to just introduce yourself and tell us where you teach?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yes, I'm the co-president of the Mokena Teachers Association and I'm also a speech-language pathologist at Mokena Elementary School. Great, and I'm also a speech-language pathologist at Mokena Elementary.
Megan - Teacher:School Great. I'm a fourth-grade teacher at Mokena Intermediate and I'm not on the MTA board, but I'm currently on the board of directors for the IEA.
Israel:Okay, so talk a little bit about that. I'm not a teacher so I don't know all the connections at Illinois and I noticed. So we're meeting largely because of the endorsement the teachers association endorsed the four incumbents that are running, but I did notice it's it's has the teacher Illinois education association. So just maybe explain first how the unions like, how everything filters down to you as teachers in the district well.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, the IEA is the Illinois Education Association and they provide support to the local unions. So the Mokena Teachers Association is a teacher's union and they really believe in electing friends of education. So I can read a little statement so that you kind of get an overview of how we do it. So the Mokena Teachers Association believes in working to elect people to school boards, specifically our school board. That will make a difference for quality education. We work to develop procedures for interviewing and recommending candidates.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Recommendations are based on the candidate's record of support and performance on public education issues. We consider anyone we recommend to be pro-education candidates and our recommendations are not determined by partisan politics and we support they're considered education party candidates. So the way we have ran it, it's kind of developed through the years and we can kind of give you a little bit of a history of that. But in this recent recommendation we have our own team of teachers that is just for this, for our political action committee. All of the candidates and we send them questions that we're interested in about how they feel about education policy, what the strengths of our school is, what they see as the weaknesses of our school, and then we invite them to a forum and we held that forum in January, was it? Yes, january, january 10th, I believe, at Mokena Junior High. So they each came to that and they were each given 15-minute time slots. So they appeared at different times. We staggered them, it was.
Megan - Teacher:December 10th. Yeah, December 10th Sorry, thank you.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:And we staggered them. And then we have moderators and they have specific questions that all of them get. The last question this year was a little bit geared towards something of a way. They answered a certain question so they had a more personalized question at the end. But it's 15 minutes. They get to kind of explain why they want to be on the board, answer our questions, and then at the end of that we have a discussion. We invite all of the teachers and educators to come. We also invite our classified staff, our paraprofessionals, our secretaries, everyone that basically works in the school, and then they're able to give us our input and then we kind of take a vote to see who the top candidates are, and that's how we go about making our recommendation.
Israel:Okay, so how many questions are the candidates asked in that questionnaire?
Megan - Teacher:Well, the questionnaire was about eight questions, I would say and then in the forum it was, I think, five, yeah, five questions.
Israel:And did all the candidates participate? Yes, they did. Okay, yes, they all participated. And is that kind of typical? Do you usually get all the candidates that are running that want to be?
Megan - Teacher:a part of this. It is a requirement to get receive an endorsement that we have to have that kind of interview.
Israel:Okay, great, and so you went over the endorsement process or kind of. But so at the meeting and then so the candidates are allowed to speak for a few minutes, but are. Are teachers asking questions or are they predetermined questions? They're predetermined. Yeah, so no one in. But are teachers asking questions or are they predetermined questions? They're predetermined.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, so no one in the audience is asking questions. Yeah, it's predetermined and it's just basically two moderators, someone who's keeping the time to make it fair.
Israel:And what was the timeframe you said they had to speak?
Megan - Teacher:Two minutes for each question.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:So it was about what they were up there about, maybe 15 minutes, I think so.
Israel:Yeah, and all the candidates completed the full questionnaires. And do you know how many of the teachers were involved in this endorsement session?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:I don't believe I counted them.
Megan - Teacher:No, we didn't count them.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, okay.
Israel:I'm not sure. All right, and then maybe give us kind of an example what are some of the questions that you would have asked the candidates?
Megan - Teacher:Do you want to tell me that? Oh gosh, I don't remember Anything.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:maybe you gear it towards, I mean, I think it was kind of like how they view the school board as a government kind of entity and how they would be as a board member. Would they, you know what would they be? Would they look at it as being involved in the classroom or, you know, being involved, you know from afar what the difference is between how they view the difference between an administrator and a board member. So just kind of seeing how they view it and yeah, I mean. And then of course, you know, we we may be asked a question about something of how they answered a question. Specifically for that last one, I'm trying to think of what else. I wish I had them in front of me, but I yeah, but that's basically just to.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:that's basically just to get an understanding. I mean, the first big question is why are you running for the board so they give their input there?
Israel:Sure, and what do you think the issues are that the teachers think are important in this election?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, I mean, I think that we could kind of this is the second time we really ran a forum. You know, a long time ago we went into this not wanting to be on the sidelines anymore, because we are the big stakeholders we're in the classrooms, we're in the classrooms, we're teaching the kids. And you know, in the history of Mokena we went through a very dark time in our district. Where it was. We were having failed referendums, we were in financial distress.
Megan - Teacher:We were losing activities, extracurricular sports, music. Yeah, losing teachers, because either they left the district because of where it was headed or we had cutbacks and we had to lose our teachers. So we had a hard few years before some of these board members came on.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Right, and so I think we learned from that that we really need to be involved each time. I mean, unfortunately, for numerous years between that time and then this time, we haven't had a lot of people running for the school board. You know, we were like there were years where it's like okay, is someone going to run for the school board?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:And they had to find someone to fill the spot Correct, and so we didn't really have to do this. There wasn't really much of a choice. But now in these latter years we're seeing a lot of people running and you know, usually they have something in mind, a particular cause of why they're running. So we want to learn about that and so we thought this is a necessary step we have had. We went to workshops through the IEA.
Megan - Teacher:I went to a training session for a grassroots organization, and so that's when I brought it back, the interview process what we could do.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, I learned about it that way.
Israel:So once you've gone through, you know, and obviously you're sending out mailers like this I saw the Facebook page. What other kind of support are you giving to the candidates after they've received your endorsement?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, there'll be more mailers, Signs, signs will go out.
Megan - Teacher:There's a big cost that we can provide some support with.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, we're going to try to build up. We have a candidate website that we are going to try to build up and put more information on there about our candidates. So someone can, you know, scan that and learn. It's kind of a work in progress right now, but that will be built up some more. Anything else?
Megan - Teacher:It's almost like we're a little bit of campaign managers. Yeah, it is.
Israel:And do you actually interact with the candidates? Are you able to work?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:You are okay, oh, yes, yeah, we talk to them quite a bit, yeah, okay.
Israel:So tell the community. Why should we give weight or credit to this endorsement? Why should this be important to homeowners and to residents?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, there's a lot of reasons. Residents Well, there's a lot of reasons. Obviously, property owners want to live in a you know, a community where education is valued because they sell their house one day, you know. You know they want someone to. People look at the school and the district they're moving in. We've had quite a people move in, a lot of people move into Mokena because and I've heard they've said we've moved here for the schools. So we want that reputation, we want to continue that reputation. And just talking about you know, some of the board members, like I mentioned the previous time where the very first time we got involved, anna Briscoe and Jim Andreessen were the first of our four candidates to get on the board. They came in in 2013, and they were instrumental in bringing things back into our district. They brought back. During that time we went to half-day kindergarten. They helped to bring back full-day kindergarten. They helped to bring back sports in the gyms, music, all of that that we were lacking.
Megan - Teacher:Smaller class sizes yes smaller class sizes.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:More teachers came back and some even returned because of our schools.
Megan - Teacher:They were riffed. Someone that was riffed went somewhere else. Once we had openings, came back.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, yeah, so that with those two, and then the other two, eric Bush and Lisa Zielinski, came on 2017, right, am I right with that? And all four of them were instrumental during the global pandemic that we suffered and changed the landscape of education completely. We needed stability and I really feel like we've had boards before where I haven't felt that stability and where I maybe got anxious going to those board meetings and thinking what is next, what's coming, but they really have provided that stability. I mean, they were instrumental in getting funding, covid funding to help us with technology, because we had to go from learning the teachers learning how to teach virtually, then going to a hybrid and then pretty quickly getting back to in-person to in-person. They made it a point to have special education students come back before anyone else did in-person when we were teaching virtually. They were coming back into the schools because they knew they need that in-person contact for their learning disabilities and they provided the PPE, the cleaning, all of that.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:They really listened to our concerns. They also listened to our concerns about running out of sick days because you know, at that time we were testing or someone in your family had COVID and you had to quarantine and you know we were. It's a very female-dominated profession, right? So you know the moms a lot of times stay home with the kids and we're losing a lot of days. So they help to bring COVID days in so that we weren't, you know, having to lose paid sick days that we might have lost because of all of that and that was before there was a state mandate.
Megan - Teacher:That was given Correct. We had that.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:And then I guess with the other area would be they've really kept a stable tax rate in the community. Taxes haven't really gone up and also we have the lowest tax rate amongst the feeder schools, so that's of an interest to property owners. When you look at Manhattan, Summit Hill, New Lenox and Frankfurt, we are the lowest. But we also have a very, very quality education. As the postcard says, they have provided us the tools to maintain a quality education and to allow our students to excel. For example, our district ranks in the top 9% of all elementary districts in the state for the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards in math, and our district ranks in the top 11% out of all elementary districts in the state for percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards in English language arts. So they have proven leadership, proven record. So it was kind of an easy choice because of all that they've done for us.
Israel:A big deal right now and an important thing to me, and I think a lot of people that pay attention, is the superintendent, the new superintendent, coming in the search that went on. How does that play in or what kind of thought process do the teachers or the union give to that and the importance of that and finding a stable, longer-term superintendent?
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Well, you know, our last superintendent was with us for about six years, right Started with the pandemic right. Yeah, with the pandemic.
Megan - Teacher:So he was four years.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, was it four? Yeah, around four years. So he was with us for a little while. We were happy that the board brought back Steve Stein, who has a history in our district, so he's helped to provide stability this year with finding someone. And also they have involved us. The board has involved us in that superintendent search so I was part, as well as other teachers that got to be part of the interview process. So we interviewed, we were part of that with a number of candidates and we were able to vote and that's how they involved us. So it was nice.
Israel:Any thoughts on the new superintendent?
Megan - Teacher:I've not met him, he seems very nice.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, I hope that he's in for the long haul. Yeah, it's nice to have someone stick around, yeah, From what I hear, he's very engaged, very excited to come on. He's planning on coming on before his term starts to meet everyone.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:So I believe there's meet and greets, you know, with the staff that we're going to each meet him at all the schools. He's going to tour the schools. He wants to learn about us before he actually starts on. Usually they start July 1, I believe our superintendent, so I think we're going to see a lot of him before the actual start date, which is good.
Israel:Yeah, very good, Good. Well, as I said, so is there. If there's anything else you want to share, Well.
Megan - Teacher:I just hope that we have a good turnout for voting, because I know that with these kinds of elections not everyone comes out for it. So I hope people get in for early voting or get out there April 1st.
Heather - MTA Co-Presiden:Yeah, I believe it's what spring break. So if you can't early vote, that's important too.
Israel:If you're able to early vote. That's important too, yeah, and, like you said, the numbers are so low. This is you really do make a difference. It's really important to be out and be involved. Heather and Megan, thank you both for joining me today. Thank you, thanks for having us.
