After recent successes of two Lockport High School District 205 Board candidates with hardline positions on banning books and regulating conversations surrounding sex education and race in schools, some similarly conservative candidates are trying their luck in 2025.
Eleven candidates are running for four 4-year board positions and five are running for two 2-year spots within Lockport 205.
The district saw two candidates backed by the conservative group We The Parents Illinois win board seats last year, Martin Boersma and Sandra Chimon Rogers. However, neither candidate finished his or her term, as Boersma resigned seven months into his term and Chimon Rogers died in June after a long-term illness.
Candace Gerritson and Lance Thies were appointed to the vacancies, and both are seeking to keep those seats in April.
“We have an unusual election,” Lockport 205 Superintendent Robert McBride said, due to the changes in board seats between election years. He said appointments must be voted on in the following election cycle, which is why so many seats are open up next year.
While the plethora of open positions represents a loss of conservative ideology on the board, some candidates hope 2025 will bring new opportunities for those advocating for more parental involvement in school decisions, including student reading materials. They include candidate Theresa “Tammy” Hayes, who was previously endorsed by We The Parents in her unsuccessful bid for the Will County District 92 Board, and Will County Republican Central Committee Vice Chairman James “Jay” Roti.
Both also filed to run for the Homer Glen Village Board, but were recently removed from that race after the Homer Glen Electoral Board ruled they cannot run for both offices. Roti said those removed are seeking to have their names reinstated through the county court system.
Hayes did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The We The Parents group represents a “small group of parents” who live within Lockport, Homer Glen and Crest Hill school districts looking to fight what they see as a “loss of control” in their children’s education, according to the organization’s website. The group advocates for such values as fiscal responsibility, high academic standards and parental involvement in student health care decisions and looks to prevent “woke and political ideology” from entering classrooms.
Hayes’ biography on the website says she believes “our schools need the community’s focus as they play such a major role in our everyday lives and preparing our kids for the future.”
“I hope to achieve this by focusing my commitment to fiscal responsibility, reinforcing solid academics in core subjects as well as building strong parental engagement and productive teacher relationships,” her biography states.
Roti was a member of We The Parents last year but said he is running independent of the organization in 2025.
“All they were were concerned parents that were going to meetings,” said Roti, whose three children have all been Lockport 205 Porters. “And that group really did the job at the time, helping the community out, getting parents involved.”
We The Parents did not respond to requests for information about endorsements for candidates running in 2025. Roti said his platform includes developing a system that notifies parents when students check out “explicit materials” at the school library. These include “anything from violence to sexual abuse to drug use, what have you,” Roti said.
“If it’s got explicit materials in it, I as a parent want to know if my minor child is being exposed to it,” Roti said.
Roti also said he wants the board to be more active in approving books to be implemented into school curriculum to prevent student exposure to sensitive content in the first place.
Superintendent McBride said he does not believe the district requires changes to its curriculum when it comes to what students read and are taught.
“We have a pretty robust, open, transparent process of how we adopt curriculum, how we adopt materials,” McBride said. “We really are not seeing that as an issue right now.”
Outside of the conservative sphere, incumbent Veronica Shaw won reelection in 2023, and her four-year position is the sole seat not up for vote in April.
Other candidates running for four-year terms are incumbent Lou Ann Johnson, Thomas “Tommy” Hill, Scott Nyssen, Wendy Streit, Paul Lencioni, Eric Nush, Zyan Navarra and Michael Deane. Those seeking two-year terms are incumbent Ann Lopez-Caneva Michaelene O’Halloran, Lance Thies, James A. Shake and Ron Farina.
