North Cook News

Incumbent board member Jim Collins rode his back-to-school message to another term on the Elmhurst School District 205 board this week.

With all precincts reporting in a field of six candidates competing for three seats, Patch.com reports Collins set the pace with 3,843 votes followed by newcomer Athena Arvanitis with 3,614 and school board President Kara Caforio with 3,187.

In the days leading up to the April 6 vote, Collins, who has served on the board since 2009, didn’t mince words about the way he feels the board has botched the handling of COVID-19.  

"Hindsight is 20/20, but I think the school district could have done a much better job of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic," he said. "We need to get all of our kids back into their classrooms ASAP."

Arvanitis sounded the same alarm, telling reporters "I believe the optimal learning environment for students is to be in class with their peers and teachers. I am a strong supporter of maximizing the number of minutes and days our children are in-person learning each week while maintaining a robust remote learning environment for students who learn from home. My goal is to work quickly toward fully and safely reopening our schools."

Through it all, Collins stressed that the focus needs to be on the needs of students. To that end, he listed his short-term goals as assessing the learning deficit each student has suffered over the life of the COVID-19 crisis and his longer-term goals as developing a lesson plan for each student to address that shortcoming.