North Cook News

The Team Glenbrook 225 slate is hoping its “together everyone achieves more” motto will ring like music to the ears of parents frustrated by the actions of the local school board over the last year.  

“People should vote for us because our priority is to get everybody back in person in the classroom and the teachers teaching to the students again,” Mai Lin Noffke told the North Cook News. “Our platform is to get back to in-person learning and increased engagement.”

Lin Noffke joins Bo Herbst, Carol Schmidt and Paul Kelly as slate members running for four open spots on the seven-member board.

“We’re marketing ourselves together,” Lin Noffke added. I’m an attorney, Carol Schmidt is an ophthalmologist, Paul Kelly a financial expert and Bo Herbst is an executive recruiter good at human relations.”

On its website, the group boasts that the team adds up to “an expert cross-section of Glenview and Northbrook neighborhoods with over 75 years of combined residency and a long history of community service and involvement throughout Glenbrook.”

Lin Noffke adds all that experience is now focused on the singular mission of doing what the group sees as the right thing by students and parents across the area.  

“We had a rally last September where Paul Vallas came to speak,” Lin Noffke added. “Later our school board did a survey asking parents and families if they wanted to return school and over 80% said they wanted in-person learning and districts ignored that. After a parent uprising, the schools scrambled to do the hybrid manner, but 75% of teachers were not in the class. Parents are upset, families are upset and the board is just reacting. Technically we’re back in hybrid learning, but teachers are teaching to computer screens.”

Lin Noffke said at a time when school boards need to be transparent, the lingering pandemic has highlighted the anonymity they operate under.

“We promise to deliver increased transparency, improved responsiveness, and better district governance that benefits all stakeholders in Glenbrook,” the group posted on its website.