While some area school districts are hurting for candidates to fill seats in the April election, Riverside-Brookfield High School District 208 has attracted a diverse group of candidates from Riverside, North Riverside and Brookfield.
With three current board members calling it quits, five candidates have emerged to challenge for those spots, including Riverside residents William McCloskey, Olga Pribyl and Luann Stirek; North Riverside resident Karen Bensfield; and Brookfield resident Martin Crowley.
Crowley is technically the only incumbent running in April. Earlier this month he was named to replace Mario Lavorato, who resigned his post due to health reasons in December 2004.
Like Crowley, none of the other candidates has run for or held elective office of any kind, although three are longtime local residents with strong ties to either RB or District 96.
McCloskey’s name is one of the more recognizable that will be on the ballot. The brother of Riverside-Brookfield High School boys basketball coach Tom McCloskey, William is a 1978 graduate of RB and a 19-year resident of Riverside.
He works as VP/general manager of Texor Petroleum, which operates the Minuteman gas station and eight other retail outlets in the area. His son graduated from RB in 2004, and his daughter is a sophomore at the school.
Stirek’s name will be familiar to residents in Riverside School District 96 as the co-chair of the district’s 2004 referendum committee. A 24-year resident of Riverside, Stirek led the committee along with Candice Grace, who will be on the ballot in April as a candidate for village trustee in Riverside.
An active parent at Blythe Park School and Hauser Junior High, Stirek has a daughter who’s a fifth grader at Blythe and another who’s a freshman at RB. Her husband, Dale, is an RB graduate.
Stirek is a past-president of the Riverside Junior Women’s Club and is involved as a Sunday School teacher and board of education director at Concordia Lutheran Church in Berwyn.
Bensfield grew up in Brookfield and has lived for the last 34 years in North Riverside. A graduate of S.E. Gross School in Brookfield and a 1969 grad of RB, Bensfield has sent four children to RB, the last one graduating some six years ago.
A vocal parent during the 1990s, Bensfield said she has seen the school go through its ups and downs throughout the years and has “the history” to help school through the next four years, which will face the critical issue of its facilities.
Pribyl, a resident of Riverside for the past four years, has two children at Central School in Riverside. Currently busy at home raising four children, Pribyl spent 13 years as an attorney in Chicago.
For eight of those 13 years, she focused on educational issues in the law, representing families with special education needs and representing other families involved in disputes with school districts.
“I have an understanding of issues and how to work through the law to come to resolutions,” Pribyl said.
The single biggest challenge in the next four years for the District 208 board will be formulating and selling a large-scale renovation of the RB campus. A special task force after several years of study recommended a $30 million renovation of the current campus last summer. Voters will almost certainly face a referendum campaign to raise the money for the project in coming years.
“The remodeling, expansion is going to happen in the next few years, and I’m very interested in that,” Stirek said. “I definitely want to be involved on the ground floor and the decisions with that.”
McCloskey also singled out the renovation issue, saying “I know there’s going to be some big decisions made on the physical property. I think I can provide some expertise in that area.”
